The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been put on the task to unearth more murky details of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia's role in swinging deals other than the 2G spectrum and to probe the role of Income Tax officials, who acted in “collusion” with “interested” persons for extraneous consideration.
A apex court Bench of Justices GS Singhvi and V Gopala Gowda on Thursday ordered the premier investigating agency to probe into 12 issues identified by a team of experts comprising CBI and IT officials, who scanned the entire transcripts of calls intercepted on phones belonging to Radia and her companies. The court felt these tapes suggest that prima facie criminality existed in these conversation that required detailed probe. The agency will submit a report within two months prior to the hearing of the case fixed on December 16.
While the court refused to divulge details of the issues to be probed, it said, “The conversations between Radia and others suggest how interested persons appear to have acted for extraneous considerations.”
The role of the IT department which recorded these calls came under scanner as the court directed the CBI to examine the “deep rooted malaise in the system” as allegations had emerged about how certain IT officials aided and abetted private individuals, including Radia companies in committing illegality.
On the last occasion when the court examined the report on the tapes submitted by the CBI in sealed cover, the Bench remarked, “The report of the CBI indicates they (IT department) were hand-in-glove with Radia.” With certain transactions even affecting national security, the Bench decided that any probe into the content of the tapes would be court-monitored.
Apart from the 12 issues referred to CBI, the SC referred two other issues that emerged out of Radia conversations to the Chief Vigilance Officer of Ministry of Mines and Chief Justice of India respectively. In the first instance, the role of Radia in allocation of mine is suspected while the latter issue pertained to fixing of a judicial order in which a huge consideration was alleged to have been paid to a judge of a High Court.
The court directed that the remaining tapes consisting of 54,000 odd calls will be scrutinised by the same team which had earlier scanned the tapes and identified areas of criminality. To this team, five more officials got added as the job was considered enormous and time-consuming. The evaluation of the transcripts would be supervised by RA Yadav and DIG Santosh Rastogi of the CBI.
Earlier, the agency had submitted that it was willing to examine only four issues while referring the remaining issues for probe by State police agencies. But the Bench was of the view that since the initial scrutiny of tapes was conducted by CBI, the probe must be handled by the agency owing to its expertise of having dealt with the matter.