The Supreme Court on Monday declined hearing on urgent basis CBI officer Manish Kumar Sinha’s petition seeking to quash his transfer to Nagpur in what has come to be known as the CBI versus CBI war in India’s premier investigating agency.
A bench comprising of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph declined to take up the matter urgently despite the petitioner’s lawyer telling the court that he wanted to bring “shocking” facts to light. CJI Gogoi replied: “Nothing shocks us”. The three member bench is scheduled to hear on Monday the plea of CBI Director Alok Verma, challenging the government’s decision of divesting him of duties and sending him on leave.
It was only on Saturday that a Deputy SP Ashwini Kumar Gupta petitioned the apex court against his transfer to the Intelligence Bureau (IB), his parent organisation. Gupta in his petition says the IB has given him NOC for his continuation in the CBI and as such his transfer would only scuttle investigations and findings against Rakesh Asthana in which he was one of the officers. He said that October 24, 2018, the CBI repatriated the applicant to his parent organisation on the ground that the order of his extension was not received by CBI. Petitioning against this, Gupta submitted that the NOC from IB regarding the extension of tenure of the applicant was received by the CBI in June 2018, before the expiry of applicant’s deputation period. The same was forwarded to the DoPT for its approval in June 2018 itself, the applicant states. Gupta has alleged that the real reason for his repatriation to IB is due to the fact that he was one of the officials who had unearthed crucial findings implicating Asthana .
—India Legal Bureau