The Hindu : Bofors and beyond

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 17, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Bofors and beyond

FOR THE CBI, the Supreme Court's decision to stay the recent Delhi High Court judgment in the Bofors pay-off case is cause for enormous relief. The Delhi High Court had quashed the chargesheet filed against the Hinduja brothers on the procedural ground that the CBI had not sought the consent of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) before doing so. The ruling had two important ramifications. To begin with, it meant that trial in the high-profile Bofors case, in some ways the most important corruption case in India, would be considerably delayed. But the significance of the Delhi High Court ruling did not stop with the fact that it would force the CBI to file a fresh chargesheet against the Hindujas, which would have resulted in both further complicating and holding up the Bofors case. At stake for the CBI was the fate of some 1,000 cases involving more than 2,000 accused in which the approval of the CVC was not obtained before the filing of chargesheets. The fear was that if the Delhi High Court ruling stood, every one of these chargesheets could be quashed on the same procedural ground.

As things stand, the Supreme Court has only stayed and not reversed the Delhi High Court judgment. But as it rejected the plea of the accused to stay the Bofors trial in the special court, the apex body made no secret about what it really felt about the High Court's ruling. Stating that it is convinced that the ruling is "totally unsustainable", the three-Judge Bench pointed out that "if such judgments are not stayed, then no prosecution will succeed". The Supreme Court's observations should make the CBI confident of winning its special leave petition, which seeks a reversal of the Delhi High Court ruling and which will be taken up for hearing later this month. At the same time, the Court has ordered that the Bofors trial should continue unhindered in the special court, a decision which will be welcomed by all those who seek an early judicial resolution of a case in which the alleged pay-offs were made over 15 years ago. Undue delays in corruption cases, particularly those as significant as Bofors, result in weariness and cynicism and it is squarely in the public interest that they are dealt with expeditiously.

However, the CBI's appeal in the Supreme Court goes beyond Bofors, touching as it does on questions about the superintendence of the investigating agency. At the heart of the issue is how the Supreme Court's landmark judgment in the Vineet Narain/Jain hawala case is to interpreted — particularly the portion which entrusts the superintendence of the CBI with the CVC. In essence, the CBI's case is that the Delhi High Court misinterpreted the Vineet Narain judgment in a manner which places the CVC in direct charge of the CBI as opposed to a more `general superintendence', which is largely of an advisory nature. In practice, the CVC's superintendence over the CBI has conformed much more closely to the latter arrangement. The CVC has neither monitored the course of investigations nor reviewed the results of them before they were filed before court. In fact, possibly the only area where the CVC has enjoyed a direct power of review has been with respect to granting or withholding permission to prosecute public servants. Irrespective of what the Supreme Court finally rules, any decision it arrives at is likely to clarify the exact nature of the relationship between India's premier investigating agency and a CVC which was asked, by no less than the Supreme Court, to exercise superintendence over it. The questions the CBI's appeal raises go well beyond the narrow issue of the procedure that should be adopted before chargesheets are filed. They relate to the true meaning or import of the Supreme Court's own judgment in the Vineet Narain case.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

Stories in this Section

Deja Vu on Economic agenda

Bofors and beyond

Debating election finance

The Vivendi debacle

The Xerox scam

Discrimination at work