New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation has begun its probe into the most controversial death of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput that has shaken the entire nation. Since then, the CBI has been prominently in the news.
Indian society has been having some sort of a love-hate relationship with this organisation. The CBI has often been criticised for its alleged failure to function impartially and objectively as an agency of law, but simultaneously there has always been an ever-increasing demand for an investigation of complicated cases involving influential persons to be handed over to the CBI.
Speaking to ETV Bharat, Former CBI joint director, NK Singh said, "There have been a lot of ups and downs in CBI, I had spent 10 years serving in CBI. No institution is today what it was earlier, so is CBI. People have a lot of confident on CBI, although sometimes, it fails to do good work and at times it has received credits for good work. I handled all sorts of cases including the St Kitts forgeries case, and many such corruption cases".
The former CBI officer arrested Indira Gandhi on October 2, 1977, that, led the former Indian Prime Minister to prison
Further, Singh said," for taking up any cases, CBI has to take clearance from the government which was not in place earlier; it has cast a shadow on the independent autonomy of CBI. Yet people have confidence in the CBI".
Any political interference in the working mechanism of CBI is not conducive. Although the government has the power to oversee CBI and provide aids and financial support whatever changes have been made recently is not favourable for independent functioning of the premier investigating agency of the country, he adds.
From corruption to murder, CBI is the go-to agency to investigate for the people of India. It is always been observed that whenever there is a case of any significance in India, a hue and cry occurs for CBI probe. Be it a high profile case of some politicians or big-shot businessman or some infamous rape cases to bank fraud cases, CBI has it all.
But this overwhelming performance doesn’t cover the cases handled by CBI that still remained unsolved.
Let’s take a look at the ups and downs of CBI.
Some of the Sensational cases handled by CBI:
Sterling Biotech scam
The infamous Sterling Biotech scam, where two men named Chetan Sandesara and his brother Sandesara, the directors of Vadodara based Sterling Biotech had allegedly defrauded half a dozen banks of Rs 5,700 crore, the CBI had found a few dairies which contained details of payments made by Sterling Biotech to people and firms in January and June 2011.
Vijay Mallya case: One of the most talked-about cases that CBI had to deal with was the Indian businessman and liquor baron Vijay Mallya’s bank fraud case. Mallya escaped from India in 2016 for the UK, after allegedly defrauding several banks of close to Rs 9,000 crore.
Chopper Scam: Another sensitive case handled by the CBI is the Rs 3,600 crore AgustaWestland Chopper scam, where allegations of bribes are paid to middlemen and even politicians surfaced after India agreed to buy 12 Augusta Westland helicopters built by the Italian defence manufacturing giant Finmeccanica.
Sharadha Chit Fund Scam
The Saradha Chit Fund Scam, which came to limelight in 2013, was another case being looked into by the CBI, where an umbrella company comprising 200 private players-the saradha group was accused of cheating more than a million of its investors by running Ponzi schemes. The CBI, in its charge sheets, had named former Finance Minister, P Chidambaram’s wife, Nalini, for alleged role in assisting in the Ponzi schemes.
Failures of CBI
From the alleged corruption cases in the 2g spectrum allocation to criminal matters such as the sensational Aarushi murder case, the probe by the CBI had drawn sharp criticism not only from the trial courts and high courts but also from the apex court.
The very famous 2g spectrum cases during the UPA led government led to the filing of charge sheets by the CBI in four different matters along with documents running into lakhs of pages but the agency could not secure even a single conviction.
According to a report published by a news agency on March this year, CBI has registered 4,985 cases, including 4,300 regular cases and 685 preliminary enquiries, between Jan 1, 2015, and February 29, 2020. As per the government record, during this period, the CBI investigated 4,717 cases (3987 RCs and 730 PEs).
Since January 1, 2015, and up to February 29, 2020, CBI has filed charge sheets in 3,700 cases.
CBI's conviction rate of 65-70per cent, according to official data, is comparable to the best investigating agencies in the world but it is not sufficient to cover CBI's handling of abetment suicide cases of which not even a single has got to its logical conclusion.
The agency has so far investigated a handful of suicide cases but in none of them, the CBI could prove that the suspect drove the deceased to suicide.
For instance, apart from Sushant’s, the agency is investigating Bollywood actress Jiah Khans death in which Sooraj Pancholi stands charged for abetting her suicide. The CBI filed a charge sheet in the case but nothing much has moved in the trial since 2017.
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