Legality of probe agency back in focus

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 28

The tragic story of a former government officer BK Bansal’s entire family committing suicide following alleged harassment by the CBI has brought the issue of the probe agency’s legality back in question.

In 2008, the Gauhati HC while hearing a petition challenging the CBI’s legality had actually held this police force as illegal. Subsequently, the SC stayed the HC orders, giving the CBI a lease of life. The agency is, however, effectively, on a lease of life from the SC.

With the shocking suicides of Bansal, his wife and two adult children, the question of CBI’s constitutionality have resurfaced with legal experts calling for immediate adjudication of the matter by the SC.

“The SC must adjudicate the legality of CBI on an urgent basis. We also need to ask how a police force working through an SC stay continues to accept fresh cases and whether this is legally right,” Manish Tewari, a lawyer-politician asks.

Tewari had moved a private member’s Bill in Parliament in 2010 to give a legal basis to the CBI, constituted under an executive order dated April 1, 1963, of the Ministry of Home.

The Gauhati HC had ruled the 1963 notification as illegal and quashed it accepting the argument of the petitioner who asked whether a police force with power of investigation could be constituted merely by an executive order of the government.

In its judgment, the HC said: “While we decline to hold and declare that the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946, is not a valid piece of legislation, we do hold that the CBI is neither an organ nor a part of the DSPE and the CBI cannot be treated as a police force constituted under the DSPE Act, 1946. We also set aside and quash the resolution whereby the CBI has been constituted. We further set aside and quash the impugned chargesheet, submitted by the CBI, against the appellant.”

Appellant Narendra Kumar had brought several critical questions for adjudication before the High Court.