With Nira Radia tapes providing leads to the Centre and CBI almost five years ago about criminal acts being committed by politicians, bureaucrats and corporate honchos, the Supreme Court on Thursday set out to examine the culpability of the CBI and Income Tax officials who failed to investigate the same.
“It is not a happy situation,” observed a Bench of Justices GS Singhvi and V Gopala Gowda on discovering how the conversations contained in the tapes were not acted upon by the IT department which had tapped corporate lobbyist Radia’s phones or CBI which used the transcripts for probing the 2G scam.
It directed the Additional Solicitor General (ASG) AS Chandhiok to inform “whether officers (of IT department) who were entrusted with the case investigation had disclosed about the serious issues discussed in the tapes with officers who gave sanction for taping the conversations.”
Not sparing the CBI either, the Bench added, “Whether CBI was informed about the criminality of a number of matters referred to in the conversations.” Besides, the Court also asked the ASG to produce original records authorising tapping of Nira Radia’s telephone and mobile.
The Court was dealing with a petition filed by industrialist Ratan Tata. He had complained about the leakage of taped contents which breached his right to privacy as Radia held the official brief for Tatas’ public relations.
The Government had tapped Radia’s phones for 180 days from August 20, 2008 for a period of 60 days and later from October 19 for another two months. On May 11, 2009, her phone was put on surveillance a third time for another 60 days following a fresh order of May 8. On the apex court’s direction, a team of five CBI officials and an IT officer examined the conversations in the tapes and reported to have found four clear cases of prima facie criminality.
Having reasons to doubt the conduct of the Centre, the bench observed, “The tapping was done five years ago, what they (Government) have done so farIJ Were they waiting for court’s orderIJ” Placing the matter on August 6, the Court even directed the CBI special counsel KK Venugopal, assisting the Court in the 2G cases to go through the report prepared by the expert team and suggest future course of action.