In a major setback for the Trinamool Congress, the Supreme Court on Tuesday gave a go-ahead to the CBI to probe the TMC leaders named in a audio-video sting titled “Operation Narada” made public last year. The court refused to interfere with the Calcutta High Court order of March 17 asking the CBI to complete the preliminary enquiry into this case within two days but agreed to modify the timeline by giving CBI one month to complete the enquiry.
Two TMC MPs — Saugata Roy and Suvendu Adhikari — had approached the apex court seeking an order to set up a Special Investigation Team to enquire into the sting tape under monitoring by the HC.
The court felt it was too premature a stage to pass such an order considering the fact that the CBI had been asked to probe whether any offence was made out against the persons shown in the sting as accepting money.
The Bench headed by Chief Justice JS Khehar did not gave into the apprehension expressed by the petitioners’ counsel, Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Manu Singhvi, that the CBI probe could turn out be a political witch-hunt sensed the real danger of political witch-hunting against top leaders of the party.
The Bench, also comprising Justices DY Chandrachud and Sanjay Kishan Kaul, told Sibal, “Your argument seems to be an expression of your experience in Government. We can read between the lines, but how do we deal with your fears if the best agency suited for this kind of investigation is the CBI. And then this is only the preliminary enquiry level. You will have all your remedies if an order for filing a case is passed against you.”
Sibal argued that the in the current political scenario, the HC should not have ordered a preliminary enquiry by CBI. “Why should CBI sitting in Delhi monitor investigation. let SIT enquire under HC’s monitoring,” he said, pointing out that the writ petition in HC was filed by the BJP General Secretary of the state.
But the court remained unimpressed, saying sufficient material was produced before the HC. “It’s a situation (in the sting) where these people already had authority and in exercise of that authority, they made commitments,” said the bench.
Before the SC upheld the High court decision, senior advocate Harish Salve, who appeared for BJP leader in the HC, contended that in its appeal against the HC order the West Bengal Government’s cast aspersions of bias against the HC judges for ordering the CBI enquiry. After this West Bengal counsel decided to withdraw the appeal but not before the apex court reprimanded him for “trespassing” limits of propriety and reasonability and demanded an unqualified apology for him.