Describing the “Radia tapes” expose as a “mind-boggling” exposure of corruption in the system of governance in the country and questioning the CVC’s ability to monitor the 2G spectrum scam case under its incumbent chief, the Supreme Court, after perusing the CBI’s probe report on Tuesday, sought a reply from the Centre regarding the steps taken by it for safe preservation of the tapes.
After going through a thick second status report submitted by the CBI annexed with some crucial documents, a bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly told Solicitor-General Gopal Subramaniam to take instructions from the government by Wednesday about the safe “preservation” of the Radia tapes.
An identical direction was issued to income-tax counsel Mukul Gupta to seek instruction from the director-general, investigations, in the department under whose command the recording was done, after clearance form the Union home secretary.
During the pre-lunch hearing, when an article in a newspaper about the Radia tapes expose on “deep rooted corruption” in the system of governance of the country was argued in detail, the bench compared the rot with the “pollution in the Ganga” which the government has failed to clean in the past 28 years despite its best efforts.
“This pollution (corruption) is mind-boggling — Ganga pollution is going on for 28 years. We are no longer living in the world of illusion (about corruption). The world of illusion is only in villages and forests,” the bench observed.
Thought the Centre and the CBI finally agreed on the monitoring of the 2G scam probe by the apex court, the agency’s counsel, Mr K.K. Venugopal, at one stage suggested that the monitoring could be done by the CVC. But the bench had reservations about monitoring by the CVC under its present chief, Mr P.J. Thomas, who himself had been a former telecom secretary and whose appointment as the head of the “watchdog” against corruption was under challenge in the apex court.
Mr Venugopal even suggested that the monitoring could be done by the CVC with its two vigilance commissioners minus Mr Thomas. But this did not cut any ice with the top court and, ultimately, both the S-G and the CBI counsel agreed that the government and the probe agency had no objection to monitoring by the apex court.
After perusing the CBI’s status report filed on Monday in a “sealed cover”, the judges did not make any comment on it but the agency counsel drew the attention of the bench to “paras 16 and 17” regarding which he merely said, “There is an annexure to it of one company about very complicated transactions — various movements of money.”
Mr Venugopal, after the hearing, refused to divulge any detail about the probe but said that some reports in the media attributed to CBI sources were far from the truth and “highly speculative”.
The bench, which opened the seal of the report towards the end of the day’s hearing, after perusing it for a few minutes, ordered it resealed for safe-keeping in the custody of the Supreme Court registrar.
The apex court passed a brief order regarding seeking instruction from the government about the safety of the Radia tapes after Mr Prashant Bhushan, counsel for Centre for PIL. an NGO, stated that the tapes, which have emerged as “crucial evidence” in the 2G scam, might be “destroyed” as they had exposed the involvement of several “very influential” people. “Like the Adarsh (Society scam) files, these tapes might also go missing. It is the duty of the court that these conversations do not disappear and they are preserved,” Mr Bhushan argued. He expressed apprehension about the possibility of the Radia tapes “disappearing” a day after top industrialist Ratan Tata filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking a probe into the “leaks” of the tapes and also destruction of the same after the purpose of the probe for which it was carried out was served.
As the CBI counsel and the S-G had some reservations about Mr Bhushan’s demand, the bench said it was necessary as he had “expressly correlated” the tapes to the 2G spectrum scam case.
In response to this, the CBI counsel said, “Original copy of the tapes is with the IT department. One copy is sent to us (CBI). We can supply a copy of the tapes in a sealed cover to the court.”