Despite the Centre placing on record a letter by the department of personnel and training to the CBI director about its willingness to hand over the case of the mysterious death of Sadiq Batcha, a close aide of former communications minister A. Raja, to the agency, the Supreme Court on Monday set a deadline of three days for the government to issue a formal notification to this effect.
Taking note of the letter and a statement by additional solicitor-general Indira Jaisingh that the government was in principle willing to hand over the probe to the CBI, a bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly ordered the notification be issued in three days and the agency immediately take up the case. The court took note of the fact that the Tamil Nadu government had written to the CBI on March 18 asking it to take up the investigation, and the matter was even argued on two previous dates — March 29 and April 1 — but still there was a hitch in issuing the notification.
The delay was questioned by the counsel for the Centre for Public Interest Litigation, an NGO which had filed a petition for a CBI probe, casting doubts on whether it was being deferred till the elections in Tamil Nadu were over.
“I don’t understand why there is so much delay when the state government has made a request to the CBI on March 18. The notification should have been issued straightaway after receipt of the state government’s request,” CPIL counsel Prashant Bhushan said. Taking note of this, the bench in its order recorded “in view of the request by the state and the willingness of the CBI to investigate the matter, and a statement by the ASG that in the case of the death of Sadiq Batcha in Chennai, an appropriate notification will be issued, we direct the Union government to issue the notification within three days.”
Leaving nothing to chance, the court also directed the CBI to take over the case papers immediately after the notification was issued.