The CBI has had a poor record of closure in high profile investigations in the past
Whenever there is a need for an impartial probe, be it criminal or corruption, there are demands to hand it over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). This is because not just people and the government, even the judiciary fear that state investigative agencies may work in the interest of politicians or could botch-up cases due to sheer incompetence. A similar demand was recently made in Sushant Singh Rajput’s (SSR) death case.Investigations by CBI, a central agency, which is supposedly free from interference of states and their politicians, are expected to be fair, fast and thorough. That is why the Supreme Court ordered the agency to probe Sushant Singh Rajput‘s death case.
However, question remains whether the agency has lived up to expectations. According to data, at least 65 per cent of the cases which have been probed by the federal agency between 2015 and 2018 are still awaiting closure. And in cases where the prosecution complaints (popularly known as chargesheets) were filed, questions were raised about the credibility of the accusations.The INX Media case involving former Finance Minister P Chidambaram was the latest such case. Arrested on August 21, 2019, the former FM had spent more than two months in judicial custody and was granted bail by the Supreme Court in December 2019. The chargesheet produced in the matter was said to have done more harm than good.
It accused Chidamabaram and his son Karti of having received a payment of Rs 9.96 lakh as a bribe in 2008, in an exchange for a favour to INX Media, founded by Peter Mukherjea and Indrani Mukherjea. This was in contrast to the original accusations made by the CBI in its first information report (FIR) in the case where it alleged that as FM, Chidambaram had received Rs 305 crore in 2007.
