Unhappy over the tardy pace of investigations into 42 FIRs involving fake encounter deaths by Army and police personnel in Manipur, the Supreme Court has summoned the Director of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday to explain the delay.
Dealing with a PIl by the victims who lost their kin in the encounters, a bench of Justices Madan B lokur and Deepak Gupta asked the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of CBI why chargesheet was not filed in four cases despite investigation been complete. In its July 5 order, the court had specifically directed the agency to ensure that the final investigation report in these four cases should be filed in court by July 27.
However, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Maninder Singh appearing for CBI on Friday told the court that the agency gave no assurance of filing the chargesheets.
The agency further disclosed that in two out of the four cases, approval to file chargesheet is still awaited while out of the cases that remained, the SIT had completed its probe in three more cases.
Considering the fact that the investigation has been pending since January this year, the bench said, “In our opinion, the investigations are taking an unduly long time and we are not satisfied with the progress made by the CBI so far. In view of the above, we would like to know from the Director of the CBI what steps must be taken to ensure that the investigations are completed early and final reports are filed as expeditiously as possible.”
Directing CBI Director’s personal presence on Monday at 2 pm, the bench said it would like a time-line to be laid down by the Director for completion of probe into all pending cases.
In its order of January 16, 2018 pertaining to this case, the Apex court had said, “All subsequent status reports filed by Sharad Aggarwal (head of SIT) should have the approval of the Director, CBI who should also monitor the progress in the investigations.” It is in this capacity, the court has summoned the Director’s personal presence.