‘HIGHER-UPS MAY BE SEEKING TO RESCUE CHIDAMBARAM IN AIRCEL-MAXIS CASE’

CBI officers are worried about impediments from within the agency slowing down their progress.

Officers within the Central Bureau of Investigation are pushing hard to get the sanction to prosecute five public servants by 18 December, which is essential to secure the custody of former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram in the Aircel-Maxis bribery case. Of these five public servants, four are IAS officers, of whom two have retired. However, the CBI officers are worried about impediments from within the agency slowing down their progress. Already, the CBI’s slow movement in the Aircel-Maxis case has come for questioning and it will come as a surprise if these agency officers manage to get the required sanctions by 18 December.

These five high- l evel bureaucrats, former and current, along-with Chidambaram and other private individuals, have been named as “accused” by CBI investigators in the AircelMaxis case. This relates to the company getting illegal approval to invest in India when Chidambaram was Finance Minister. Chidambaram has been made “Accused no. 1” in the case.

Of the five bureaucrats, two, Ashok Chawla and Ashok Jha have retired. Of the remaining three, Deepak Kumar Singh is a Bihar cadre officer, while Kumar Sanjay Krishna is presently posted in Assam in the rank of Additional Chief Secretary. The other public servant is Ram Sharan, who was serving as an Under- Secretary in the now defunct Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB).

Official sources said that if the agency is unable to secure the sanctions by 18 December—which will require the movement of files from Delhi to Patna and Delhi to Guwahati—the possibility is high that the case will fall flat on its face and Chidambaram and the other accused will walk free, 2G style. The delay in obtaining the sanctions is all the more glaring as the court had in the past scolded the agency for not being able to secure the required sanctions despite the agency filing the charge- sheet way back on 19 July 2018.

“It is very surprising that the agency has been unable to do so (secure the sanctions) till now. How can the agency explain the fact that despite more than four months of the charge-sheet being filed, it has failed to get the sanctions despite repeated castigation from the CBI court? The only thing which can explain this is that some top officials including within CBI are not serious about moving forward in the case,” said a former CBI official. The influence of Chidambaram, whose defence will be seriously af- fected were sanctions given to prosecute the five named officials, is known to be pervasive in various institutions. A CBI officer warned that the bureaucrats were the link to Chidambaram and if they were not prosecuted, “there may be no provable connection between the Aircel-Maxis decisions and the former Finance and Home Minister”, who is known to be a favourite of former Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

On 1 October, the Special Court of O.P. Saini had granted seven weeks to the CBI to obtain the sanction to prosecute Chidambaram and other serving or former public servants in the case. It had also pulled up the agency for filing the charge sheet without proper sanction and told the CBI that if the required documents were not filed by 26 November, the day of the next hearing, the court may take appropriate action.

“You (CBI) should not have filed the charge-sheet. It is only increasing the pendency of the court. A lot of time of the court has been wasted due to this,” Special Judge