CBI DIRECTOR RELIEVES HIS DEPUTY OF ALL HIS DUTIES
HC GIVES RELIEF TO ASTHANA: NO ARREST TILL MONDAY; HIS AIDE IS ACCUSED OF RUNNING AN EXTORTION RACKET IN CBI
With the conflict in the top echelons of the CBI coming out in the open, CBI director Alok Verma has decided not to hold back his punches and has relieved his deputy, Rakesh Asthana, of all duties.
Asthana will retain his number two slot as a special director but will cease to be an alternate power centre within the agency -- clout that he enjoyed owing to his perceived proximity to the ruling dispensation.
More important, Asthana will no longer be handling sensitive cases that he was entrusted with; as a head of the Special Investigation Team, he was looking into the alleged indiscretions of both Vijay Mallya and former finance minister P Chidamabaram.
But even as Verma asserted his authority and clipped his deputy’s wings, Asthana took the CBI to court, challenging the bribery charges levelled against him, striking down of the FIR, and seeking protection from arrest.
The High Court has obliged by giving him temporary relief and he will not be arrested at least till Monday -when the case is taken up next. During the proceedings, a comment by the CBI counsel comparing Asthana with a "pest" prompted a sharp rebuke from the Delhi High Court. CBI counsel K Raghavacharyulu, in an apparent reference to Asthana, had said, "If there is pest in wood, the wood will become useless". Justice Najmi Waziri warned the lawyer, saying such statements had no place in the court.
On October 15, the CBI, in an unprecedented step, had booked Asthana in a corruption case, accusing him of having accepted around Rs 3 crore as a bribe. Asthana, in turn, has alleged, that the bribe was accepted by CBI
The Congress on Tuesday decried Prime Minister Modi summoning the heads of the CBI and RAW (Research & Analysis Wing) to his residence, asserting that he was influencing the ongoing corruption investigation.
Seeking to know the instructions he gave to them, party chief spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala asked: "Does it not tantamount to illegal and unconstitutional interference in the ongoing investigation against the CBI and RAW officers?"
He told a press conference that the role of the Central Vigilance Commission itself is under cloud as he was shying away from his statutory duty to act impartially and decisively to punish wrong doing. Is CVC also being instructed by someone in the political executive, Surjewala asked.
On the External Affairs Ministry refusing to give names of those accompanying Prime Minister Modi despite Chief Information Commissioner's directive on the pretext of the sensitive information impinging upon national security and India's sovereignty, Congress President Rahul Gandhi tweeted that the PM should have stated in the RTI reply that "I take along those who will be taken away by police if I don't."
Surjewala accused the Prime Minister of systematically demolishing the independent architecture of all premier agencies, including CBI, ED, SFIO, CBDT, NIA and Income Tax Department. His reference was to a complaint of alleged corruption filed by CBI special director Rakesh Asthana against his boss Alok Verma last month. In a statement, Surjewala and Jharkhand PCC chief Dr Ajoy Kumar held Prime Minister Modi as "solely accountable and responsible for dismantling, denigrating and destroying CBI, India's premier investigation agency."
"Habitual and perpetual misuse of CBI by PM Modi and BJP President, Shri Amit Shah in fixing political opponents and illegal intervention to tamper fair investigation of serious criminal cases has landed the CBI in an unfathomable mess, eroding its independence and credibility," they said.
They cited half a dozen cases of the doubtful role of the political executive at the highest level in tandem with the senior CBI officers.
Surjewala said many such instances can be cited. He said the CBI is not the only institution decimated and dismantled by a political design to subserve the dirty tricks department of BJP.
He also alleged that the "captive puppets" were being given extensions. He cited the case of the repeated extensions to the CBDT chairperson and similar repeated extension of the earlier NIA chief. "All these are meant to subvert, suppress and subjugate to serve at the whims of PM and the BJP," he added.