COURTESY HT DEC 22

HC seeks clarification from Punjab on 2019 letter to CBI for probe
Surender Sharma

surrender.sharma@htlive.com

Chandigarh : The Punjab and Haryana high court has asked Punjab government to clarify whether 2019 letter by the director, Bureau of Investigation, asking the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to further probe the 2015 sacrilege cases was written with the approval of the government. The letter was written even as the Punjab government in September 2018 had withdrawn consent to CBI to probe these three FIRs.

“Whether or not even any such approval from the government would actually have any significance in the face of a notification issued by the government withdrawing its consent for investigation by the CBI, would be an issue to be considered thereafter, after the factual position with regard to the above has been confirmed by the learned senior counsel appearing for the State of Punjab,” the bench of justice Amol Rattan Singh said asking state’s counsel Harin P Rawal to look at the file notings pertaining to the issuance of that letter (and any ancillary notings), in view of the fact that the government had issued a notification on September 6, 2018 ,withdrawing its consent for investigation by the CBI. The letter also read it was written with the concurrence of the DGP.

The order was passed after senior advocate Vinod Ghai told the court that the director, Bureau of Investigation, in a July 2019 letter addressed to the director, CBI, had asked the agency to probe the matter further citing fresh leads. The letter was written days after the CBI had filed a closure report before the special court in Mohali.

Ghai had argued that the CBI was probing the matter and chose to file closure report and when the central agency CBI had already probed the matter, how SIT can again open it?

He was appearing for Sukhjinder Singh and another Dera Sacha Sauda follower Shakti Singh, who have filed a plea questioning how two agencies are probing the same FIRs. They say parallel probe of same alleged offence is not permissible in law by two agencies. In the case in hand, the CBI says it is probing the FIRs, whereas state government has constituted a special investigation team (SIT), which too is probing these FIRs.

Two persons were killed in the violence at Behbal Kalan in Faridkot district after incidents of sacrilege in 2015. Three FIRs on incidents of sacrilege were recommended for a CBI probe in 2015, by then SAD government. Of these, the Captain Amarinder Singh government passed a resolution to withdraw two FIRs in August 2018. In the same resolution, it also withdrew two more FIRs related to violence, entrusted to the CBI, barely four days after the move. But CBI says de-notification of withdrawing cases from CBI by the Centre has not been done. Hence, it is still probing the cases.