Decks are cleared for the Punjab Police to probe the Behbal Kalan and Bargari sacrilege cases. After the Supreme Court rejected the central probe agency’s plea against Punjab Government’s notification to withdraw investigations in the Behbal Kalan and Bargari cases from the CBI on the grounds of delay, the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Thursday announced that the cases will now be “investigated by the Punjab Police only”.
The Chief Minister, on the onset of Zero Hour, announced in the House that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) petition before the Supreme Court, challenging an earlier order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court that had upheld the notification of the Punjab Government to withdraw the investigation in the Behbal Kalan and Bargari sacrilege cases from the central probe agency, has been dismissed.
“Supreme Court has upheld the Government’s decision and now we would see what to be done,” he said while assuring that the SIT investigation into these cases would be taken to its logical conclusion.
Intervening, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Aman Arora welcomed the decision, but demanded that the Punjab Government should ensure time-bound investigations into the cases so that the guilty could be awarded punishment.
At the same time, he sought clarification from the Chief Minister whether the Supreme Court verdict related to all the cases — Behbal Kalan, Bargari-Kotakpura firing incident — to be precise pointing that all those were separate cases.
Going into background, the CBI had challenged the legality of the State Government’s September 2019 notification to withdraw the three sacrilege-related violence cases from it in the High Court but it had ruled that the chain of events showed that the same were inextricably linked and thus it did not feel the need to interfere in the decision of the State Government to withdraw investigation from the CBI or to set aside the consequent notifications.
With this, the Apex Coyrt has cleared the legal hurdle for the State to carry on its investigations into the sacrilege cases and the subsequent police firing in these cases, which were handed over to the CBI by the erstwhile SAD-BJP regime.
In view of the CBI’s failure to complete the probe in the cases, the Captain Amarinder government had announced in the House earlier that the cases would be taken back from the central agency and would be investigated by the state government.
During the hearing in the Apex Court, a division bench of Justice Rohington Nariman and Ravindra Bhatt dismissed the CBI case, rejecting the arguments of their advocate Aman Lekhi on the ground that instead of the 90 days given to the agency to file the SLP (special leave petition), it had taken 257 days to make its submission.
The Judge also rejected Lekhi’s argument that the CBI team had a problem on the legal issue as it would form precedent, and not on the investigation being transferred.
The Judge then ordered dismissal of the SLP on the ground of delay, while keeping the question of law open.
“Given this, the act of reverting the investigation to the State Police from CBI has now attained finality and no further fetter remains on the SIT to investigate the same,” said the state Advocate-General Atul Nanda.
He underlined that as per previous judgments, “once investigation is transferred to CBI, it cannot be withdrawn. Those cases were decided on their own facts, but the question of whether the state legislature has the power to take back an investigation from CBI, in terms of general clauses act, was left open”.
The prosecution’s case was that the three FIRs in the sacrilege cases were initially registered by the Punjab Police but the investigation was later handed over by the State of Punjab to CBI. It was submitted that since the CBI had filed a joint Closure Report in the above said three cases, the state of Punjab requires the certified copy of joint report along with the copies of documents attached thereto for its official use.
It was further submitted by the prosecution that only the investigation was transferred and CBI had been informing the stage of investigation to the State of Punjab from time to time.
Further, the prosecution argued that later on, a resolution was passed by the Punjab Legislative Assembly vide which the investigation was taken back from the CBI and accordingly, on September 6, 2018, a notification was issued by the State of Punjab, withdrawing the consent to the CBI to investigate the case.
The said resolution and the notification were challenged in the High Court, which, vide judgment reported as 2019(2) RCR Criminal, Page 165, upheld the notification. The CBI did not file any SLP and thus, after the withdrawal of the consent, the State had full right to investigate the cases, it was argued for the state.