The special crime branch of the CBI’s Delhi unit will re-investigate the 2010 murder of Pune-based RTI activist Satish Shetty, the investigating agency informed the Bombay High Court here on Monday.
In a submission made seven months after the investigating agency filed a closure report in the case before a Wadgaon-Maval court in Pune district, the CBI’s lawyer Hiten Venegaonkar told a HC division Bench headed by Justice VK Tahilramani that the case would be re-investigated by the agency’s Delhi special crime branch, instead of its Pune unit which had carried out the earlier investigations.
The HC division Bench was hearing a petition filed by Shetty’s brother Sandeep Shetty, alleging irregularities in the CBI probe and seeking the prosecution of a former CBI Director and a special director.
In his petition, Sandeep Shetty has among other things alleged that the CBI’s investigating officer SP Singh had filed a closure report in the case, after he was pressured to do so by his superiors.
The petitioner had stated till February 2014, the CBI investigating officer had been maintaining that the agency was on the right track in investigation, but later he seemed to have come under “tremendous pressure” from some quarters and there were clear indications that someone was “jeopardising the probe”.
In its closure report filed in the case before the Wadgaon-Maval court on August 11, 2014, the CBI had claimed that it did not find “sufficient or prosecutable” evidence against any of the accused persons.