Top court gives CBI three weeks to complete Vyapam cases takeover

The Supreme Court on Monday gave the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) three more weeks to take over probe in all Vyapam cases while asking the Centre to submit a proposal for filling up vacancies in the investigating agency, which has often complained of staff shortage.

Asking the CBI to probe all cases related to the multi-crore admission and job scandal in Madhya Pradesh, the court also ordered the agency to appoint public prosecutors to conduct the trial in sessions courts.

A bench headed by Chief Justice HL Dattu told CBI counsel and solicitor general Ranjit Kumar that it would appoint the prosecutors if the agency wouldn’t. It said all Vyapam cases – which have increased from 185 to 212 – would be probed by the CBI even though the special investigation team and special task force had filed charge sheets in 78 cases.

Taking up the shortage of manpower in the CBI, the court asked the country’s top law officer attorney general Mukul Rohatgi to come back within three weeks with a proposal for filing the vacancies.

“You need trained investigators. It takes two years to train them and I don’t have a pool of investigators,” Rohatgi told the court, which will now hear the case on September 11.

When the Supreme Court took up a PIL seeking a CBI probe into Vyapam cases, 185 FIRs had been registered but the number had now gone up to 212 and was expected to rise further, Rohtagi said.

Half of the CBI personnel, he said, were on deputation and had gone back to their parent cadres. States were not sending more officers, he complained.