The Supreme Court grilled CBI on Thursday for keeping secret for two years the names of two persons, including former telecom minister A Raja, in the Rs1.76-lakh-crore 2G spectrum scam.
Neither have they been named in the FIR nor ever summoned for questioning, an anguished bench of justices GS Singhvi and AK Ganguly said.
During the resumed hearing of the petition filed by the Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), seeking a court-monitored investigation in the “biggest ever” scam, the apex court said the agency was “beating about the bush” even though the illegality committed by the minister and his private secretary was “prima facie evident”.
The judges who heard CPIL’s lawyer Prashant Bhushan also expressed dismay at the CBI not even questioning Raja and his private secretary Chandolia till now.
When CBI’s counsel KK Venugopal said the court should rethink if the CPIL’s plea for setting up a special investigating team should be accepted or not, the apex court sternly told him not teach it how to hear the case.
Having a plethora of documents in hand, any “responsible” agency would question these two persons, the top court said while putting a question mark on the performance of the premier agency in the scam that has “put other scams to shame”.
In a court room that was over crowded with a number of lawyers who presumably watched the proceedings at the behest of certain parties having link with the scam, the court also took exception to the agency’s little action against the two companies - Swan Telecom and Unitech Wireless Ltd.
The transfer of the licences by these companies alone has deprived the exchequer of Rs9,000 crore, the court observed. The court also disapproved the CBI’s contention that it had to go through at least 8,000 documents and the transcripts.
Venugopal offered an explanation saying it’s a gigantic investigation with links abroad. The court asked him to file a status report when the matter was again heard on Tuesday.
“The CAG under constitution has a very important position. It is an authority set up under the constitution. If such an authority set up under the constitution gives such a report any reasonable person will question the minister and the secretary,” the bench told the CBI counsel.
