CBI ’unconstitutional’, can’t investigate crimes: Gauhati High Court

mangaloretoday.com

New Delhi, Nov 8:  The Centre will challenge an unprecedented court order that says that the Central Bureau of Investigation or CBI is ’unconstitutional’ and does not have powers to investigate crimes.

The government’s main investigating agency stands to lose its powers to probe, file FIRs or First Information Reports, arrest suspects and file charge-sheets after the Gauhati High Court said on Wednesday that the CBI cannot be treated as a police force; it can only conduct "inquiries".

The order has stunned the government and left all cases being investigated by the CBI in limbo. Sources say the agency feels it cannot register any cases until the ruling is challenged.

 

"We will move the Supreme Court immediately. We will take a final call after discussing with the Prime Minister," said V Narayanasamy, Minister of State at the PM’s Office.

The high court’s order came on a petition challenging a CBI charge-sheet on a Mahanagar Telephone Nigam employee, which ended up questioning the validity of the agency for the first time in its 50-year existence.

The judges said the union home ministry order under which the CBI was set up in 1963 was invalid as police investigations are under the state’s purview. The centre’s resolution, they noted, was not even sent to the President and never received his assent.

The court said the Centre had failed to prove that the CBI had been constituted as a special police force under the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act of 1946, from which it derives its powers to investigate.

"The actions of the CBI in registering a case, arresting a person as an offender, conducting searches and siezures and prosecuting an accused can be seen as unconstitutional," said the 89-page judgement.

This could have an impact on several high profile cases like the coal allocation scam and the 2G spectrum scam, in which the Supreme Court had asked the CBI for regular probe status reports.

Legal experts point out that the Supreme Court has, in several judgments, validated the CBI and its authority to investigate cases. In 1997, the top court had said that almost all states had accepted the law that created the CBI, so the agency could investigate crimes in these states.

The CBI is seeking legal opinion on whether the order will have a bearing on all its cases.