NEW DELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has given a clean chit to Prime Minister Narasimha Rao on the Rs 1 crore payoff charge against him by stockbroker Harshad Mehta, even without conducting any investigations.
In what several members of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probing the scam described as “a brazen attempt to shield the Prime Minister,” CBI director K. Vijaya Rama Rao told the committee Oct.19 that legal advice of the Ministry of Law stated that it was legally untenable to register a case under the Prevention of Corruption Act as certain preconditions were not fulfilled,
Several JPC members came down heavily on the CBI for its curious approach in the whole matter and said that no sincere efforts were made to investigate the payoff charge. They wondered how the CBI could stop such an important inquiry on technical grounds and without conducting any investigations,
Explaining the grounds on which the case has been dropped, the CBI director told the committee that the affidavit filed by Harshad Mehta’s lawyer Mahesh Jethmalani with the CBI in February this year to register a case under the Prevention of Corruption Act against the Prime Minister was “defective,”
Curiously, the CBI said that it had made “discreet enquiries” on the basis of newspaper reports on the Rs 1crore payoff but did not explain to the JPC what these “discreet enquiries” were.
Several JPC members described the attitude of CBI during the deposition as “ridiculous” and said that the agency has “done absolutely nothing.” Some members said the stand of CBI on the payoff issues “was nothing unexpected” going by the unsatisfactory manner in which it has been handling the Scam cases.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 29, 1993
