Congress has mastered the art of misusing CBI: Arun Jaitley

BJP on Sunday said that the truth about political misuse of CBI had now "slipped out" after the comment by CBI Director Ranjit Sinha that the UPA government would have been happy had Narendra Modi's aide Amit Shah been chargesheeted in the Ishrat Jahan case.

Although Sinha yesterday denied having made the remark, BJP leader Arun Jaitley stepped up the offensive against the Congress-led coalition and said that the government had in its decade-long rule "mastered the art of manipulating" CBI. "Yesterday, a statement by the CBI director was published ... The truth slipped out... The denial of the CBI director that he made the statement is immaterial.

"There is voluminous evidence available with regard to the pliability of the CBI even independent of his retracted statement," he said in an article on his blog. "The UPA during the period 2004-2014 mastered the art of manipulating the CBI. The CBI during this period was not controlled by the government.

"Worse still, it was controlled by the ruling party," Jaitley said while calling for seriously examining the process of alleged manipulation of CBI by UPA. "Independent of the CBI director's statement and the clarification, as the tenure of the UPA draws to a close, it may be helpful if the process of manipulation of the CBI is seriously examined," he said.

Jaitley said a pliable person is selected to become the Director of CBI, which as an organisation is driven by its chief and he has the last word. He said investigating officers prepare the investigation file with the idea of inculpating or exculpating a particular person and "internal checks and balances had completely collapsed".

The BJP leader also alleged that the CBI directors were offered fresh jobs on the eve of retirement and a post- retirement job would be suggested to them and "this would contribute to their pliability". Meanwhile, reacting to Jaitley's comments, Union Minister Rajiv Shukla said, "CBI works as an independent agency. There is no interference of government in it. To say that government regulates or instructs it is wrong."

Jaitley cited the example of the Emergency when almost two lakh FIRs were registered by the government using police and investigating agencies to "fabricate" cases against political activists. He said the opposition political workers were then accused of delivering speeches at milk booths or bus stops in the early hours of morning as to how the Congress government should be overthrown.

"Those were no grounds for detention. Regrettably not a single police officer stood up and revolted by asserting that he would not lodge a false FIR or implicate an innocent man in it. "They all colluded in contributing to the tyranny of the Emergency," he said.

Jaitley said in a detailed letter to the Prime Minister recently, he had mentioned instances claiming how senior BJP leaders like Amit Shah, Gulab Chand Kataria and Rajender Rathore were falsely implicated by CBI. He also charged the "minority" UPA government with remaining in power with the outside support of Samajwadi Party and BSP. "In both cases, it was the cooperation of the CBI that was instrumental in manipulating the support of these two parties.

"Their top leaders were charged for possession of disproportionate assets," he said.