Dont Shift Officers Probing Sensitive Cases, Sc Tells Govt

The Supreme Court yesterday asked the government not to shift officers investigating into sensitive cases like the hawala and fodder scams and urged the courts all over the country not to entertain petitions regarding such transfers.

The court order will be valid till Monday when it will take up a host of cases, including the transfer of former CBI director Joginder Singh and the apprehended transfers of key officers investigating hawala, Chandraswami, Indian Bank and the rest of the politics-tinged cases. Chief Justice J S Verma also assailed the present flood of public interest litigation on these matters. He remarked that even a magistrate has left his work and filed a petition in the Delhi High Court regarding Joginder Singh. We are disturbed by this trend, he remarked, and added that public interest litigation could not be turned into unruly proceedings.

The order of the court will cover officers of the CBI, the Enforcement Directorate and all such investigating agencies. Attorney General Ashok Desai was initially reluctant to give an undertaking not to shift officers. But when the judges said it was their hope that the government would not do so, counsel replied that your hope is a command.; you will not be disappointed.

The court in its order stated that since it was monitoring these cases, it would not be appropriate for other courts, including the high courts, to deal with the same matters. It has become necessary to clarify this, said the order, because the same questions in different forms are being raised in other courts. All high courts in the country have been ordered to be informed about this order.

The court-appointed counsel in these matters, Anil Divan, submitted further arguments in writing to the court, which will be considered on Monday. He referred to apprehensions about the shifting of officers and other news reports. The Attorney General asserted that the government would not do anything inappropriate. The suggestion that we are upto something is unfounded. All kinds of reports are appearing in the press which are unfounded, he said.