In a major embarrassment to the CBI, the Madras High Court Friday ordered the Tamil Nadu Police to probe the disappearance of 103 kg gold (amounting to more than Rs 43 crore) from the agency’s custody, rejecting its plea that “the prestige of the CBI would come down if investigation is done by the local police”. Asking the CB-CID to register an FIR, the court said: “It may be an agni pariksha (trial by fire) for the CBI, but that cannot be helped. If their hands are clean, like Sita, they may come out brighter. If not, they would have to face the music.”
On the CBI Special Public Prosecutor asking for a probe by the CBI or National Investigation Agency instead of the state police, Judge P N Prakash said, “The court cannot subscribe to this view, because the law does not sanction such an inference. All policemen have to be trusted and it does not lie in the mouth of one to say that the CBI have special horns, whereas, the local police have only a tail.”
The CBI had seized the gold in connection with cases dating back to 2012 filed over allegations that officials of Minerals and Metals Trading Corporation of India (MMTC) in Chennai had shown undue favours towards Surana Corporation Limited, which dealt in import of gold and silver. The gold, amounting to 400.47 kg, and in the form of bars and ornaments, was seized by the CBI from the office building of Surana in Chennai, and locked and sealed in the firm’s vaults. The CBI claims to have submitted the keys of the vault to a Special CBI Court in Chennai, though no date regarding this is mentioned in documents.
In September 2013, the CBI registered another case, saying that while the seized gold was not wanted in the 2012 cases, it had found that Surana had imported the same in violation of the Foreign Trade Policy. The CBI hence requested that the seized gold be transferred from the first case to the fresh one — following which the court allowed the transfer of about 400 kg on record. “There was no physical inventorisation by the court” as the gold was already in the vault.
Coming down heavily on the CBI, the high court said that had the gold been physically entrusted to the CBI Special Court, and gone missing from there, “the CBI would have cried foul from the rooftops and demanded the scalp of the Special Judge and his Property Clerk. The Special Judge and the Property Clerk would have been placed under suspension and would have even been arrested…”.Noting that “Caesar’s wife should be beyond suspicion”, the court directed the CB-CID’s Metro Wing in Chennai, which comes under the state government, to register a regular FIR for theft and entrust the investigation to an SP-rank officer to complete the probe in six months.
