The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Special CBI judge to take a decision on the private complaint of Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy, seeking a directive to the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the alleged role of Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram in the 2G case during his tenure as Finance Minister.
A Bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly, disposing of Dr. Swamy's application said it “shall not in any manner prejudicially affect the applicant's case in the matter pending before the Special judge, CBI and the court concerned shall decide the applications already filed by him or which he may file in future without being influenced by this order.”
Dr. Swamy in his application alleged that the crime in the 2G case could not have been possible but for the connivance of Mr. Chidambaram. He submitted that the documents produced by him were sufficient to draw an inference that Mr. Chidambaram was very much a party to the grant of Letters of Intent and spectrum to a large umber of ineligible persons and, therefore, the CBI should be directed to question him on his role in the grant of Letters of Intent and spectrum at the 2001 prices.”
On behalf of the CBI, senior counsel K.K. Venugopal argued that once the agency had taken up the probe, the court could not direct the manner in which it should be conducted.
The Bench said: “We have considered the respective submissions. In our opinion, there is no merit in the argument of senior counsel P.P. Rao, [who appeared for the Centre], that the monitoring of 2G case should be stopped because the CBI has already filed charge sheets in the Court of Special Judge, CBI. It is not in dispute that although the CBI has filed charge sheet in April, 2011 and a supplementary charge sheet in August, 2011, the investigation into some of the facets of 2G case is yet to be completed and the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate have filed reports showing further progress made in the investigation. Therefore, the ratio of the judgments relied upon by learned senior counsel for the Union of India cannot be pressed into service for entertaining the argument that this Court should not pass any further order in the matter.”
However, it said, “keeping in view the fact that the intervener has already filed an application before the Special Judge, CBI, before whom he is appearing in person in the complaint-case instituted by him and made a prayer for summoning Mr. Chidambaram as an accused, we do not consider it proper to entertain his prayer for issue of a mandate to the CBI to investigate Mr. Chidambaram. Application is disposed of.”