Radia tapes: SC pulls up IT dept, CBI for not acting on info

The Supreme Court today pulled up the Income Tax department and CBI for not taking action in the last five years on information gathered from tapped phone conversations of Niira Radia with corporate honchos, politicians and others, saying it is "not a happy situation".
A bench of justices G S Singhvi and K S Radhakrishnan asked the authorities why they did not take action as the tapes contain talks "far beyond" personal conversations.
"The tapping was done five years ago, what have they (government authorities) done so far? Were they waiting for court's order?,"the bench said.
"It is not a happy situation that action will be taken only after court's order," the bench said.

After going through the analysis of the conversations, done by a six-member special team constituted by the apex court, the bench said action should have been taken earlier.
"After this report, a lot of things have come to light. We thought the conversation was pure personal but the analysis says it is far beyond that," the bench said.

It asked the IT department to place before the bench all original records pertaining to authorisation of tapping of Radia's phones.
The court directed the IT department, which had tapped Radia's phones, to apprise it whether the officers entrusted with the task of tapping had informed their seniors about the contents of the recording and whether CBI was informed about criminality with regard to matters referred to in the conversations.

The bench directed the IT department to comply with its order by August 6 when the matter will be taken up for further hearing.