Cbi Blasted For Scuttling Fodder Scam Probe

The division bench comprising Justices S N Jha and S J Mukhopadhyaya passed strictures on CBI officials following revelation by CBI joint director (eastern region) U N Biswas that the CBI headquarters was interfering with the investigation to protect politicians and bureaucrats.

Biswas created a flutter in the court room when he told the judges that the report submitted before the court was not the original one but the one submitted by his deputy, Ranjit Sinha (DIG).

Biswas informed the court the headquarters ignored the report sent by him and instead cleared Sinha's report.

After Biswas' submission, the bench termed the report submitted by Sinha as "truncated and sketchy" and demanded to know why there were "startling" difference between the reports submitted by him earlier and the one presented by Sinha.

The court expressed its disapproval of CBI's failure to expose the politician-bureaucrat nexus in the scam. Appearing on behalf of CBI, additional solicitor-general B R Reddy said the CBI, true its tradition, was pursuing the case and had so far submitted three action- taken report. Reddy, however, averted questions of judges on why the joint director's report was not presented before the court.

The counsel for the leader of the opposition, Sushil Kumar Modi, pleaded before the court that the joint director of CBI (east) was being harassed by the higher authorities.

Modi's counsel asked the court to provide "strictest" security to Biswas following threats to his life. The leader of opposition counsel sought the court's intervention to replace Ranjit Sinha by another officer of the similar rank, Atul Prasad, in the interest of "speedy and fair" investigation.