By IANS,
New Delhi: The CBI Tuesday objected to the central government telling the Supreme Court that it will examine documents given by Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy indicating that Home Minister P. Chidambaram, as the then finance minister, was also involved in fixing the 2G spectrum price.
Swamy is seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe against Chidambaram alleging that the spectrum price was not decided by jailed former communications minister A. Raja alone but was jointly fixed by the two.
An apex court bench of Justice G.S. Singhvi and Justice A.K. Ganguly was told that the 15 documents presented by Swamy were part of the 500 documents in a file that have already been perused by the CBI and the report was already with the special court trying the 2G scam case.
Senior counsel K.K. Venugopal, appearing for the probe agency, took exception to the central government telling the apex court that the “new documents filed for the first time before this court will naturally be studied and considered by the CBI as usual and may be covered in the next status report (to the apex court)”.
“Nobody can put in our mouth what we are going to do. We are autonomous and independent of the government,” Venugopal said.
Venugopal told the court that except for the latest letter from the finance ministry, the agency had looked into and examined all other documents.
The court was told that even the latest letter of the ministry was the compilation of the documents that were already in the know of the agency.
The senior counsel was referring to the March 26 office memorandum sent by Finance Ministry Deputy Director P.G.S. Rao to Joint Secretary, Prime minister’s Office, Vinni Mahajan.
Senior counsel P.P. Rao appearing for the government argued for an end to the apex court monitoring of the 2G matter pertaining to main conspiracy case.
He said that after the trial court of CBI Special Judge O.P. Saini had taken cognizance of the charge sheet filed by the CBI, the monitoring should have stopped.
Referring to the earlier judgments of the apex court, Rao told the court that “once the trial court had taken the cognizance, the monitoring (of the same) would amount to parallel proceedings”.
The senior counsel told the court that “any person, howsoever high he may be, if guilty, must be brought to book but in accordance with the procedure and law laid down in that respect”.
Justice Ganguly said: “A balance has to be struck between the technicalities (of law) and niceties of procedures and the larger public considerations”.
Senior counsel Sushil Kumar, appearing for former communications minister A. Raja, told the court that his client was already “suffering a serious prejudice” as the CBI had told the trial court that investigation in main conspiracy case was over and in the Supreme Court the probe agency said that investigation on two counts was still progressing.
He said that framing of charges in the trial court should have been completed by Sep 15.
The senior counsel said that there was an apex court “embargo” by which a plea for bail could not be considered until the charges were framed.
Saying that Swamy’s application should be sent to the special court, Sushil Kumar said that any order by the apex court would prolong the proceedings of the trial court and consequently delay the bail of his client.
“Look at our plight. Trial is not on. Investigation is not complete. We are suffering,” said Sushil Kumar.
Swamy earlier sought a CBI probe against Chidambaram and said that on the 2G spectrum pricing “Raja and Chidambaram had the meeting of mind” and “will it be fair on one accused to take all the blame”.
He said that the CBI investigation was truncated and the probe agency had relied on the documents that suited it.
He said that the CBI has deliberately ignored the material that could have linked Chidambaram to the case.
Swamy said that the CBI should have examined Chidambaram as he was in the know of things relating of 2G spectrum pricing.