Senior lawyer and co-chairman of the joint drafting committee on Lokpal Bill Shanti Bhushan, has in a letter to home minister P. Chidambaram, sought the making public of Centre for Forensic Sciences Laboratory Chandigarh report on a CD with purported conversations between him and political leaders Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh. The CFSL Chandigarh report has apparently found that the CD was a cut and paste job. Mr Bhushan claimed that the release of the report will not hamper the investigations as he was the sole complainant in the case.
The senior lawyer said the investigating officer of Delhi police had informed him that they cannot share with him the CFSL report of Chandigarh and other details as it will hamper the investigations. “I find this strange. The report of CFSL, Delhi which declared the fabricated CD to be authentic and was not even able to detect a crude cut and past job, has already been released,” he said.
“Since I know that the CD is a fabricated one, he appears to have given this totally incorrect report to ingratiate himself to them. The people of India may easily guess as to which persons are behind the smear campaign against the civil society members of the Lokpal bill drafting committee,” Mr Bhushan said.
“Some people are perceiving, though this perception is not shared by me, that perhaps an effort might be on try to pressurise the CFSL, Chandigarh, to change its report, and that is the reason to keep the report under wraps for so long,” he added.
The report pertains to a CD that had circulated ahead of the first meeting of the joint drafting committee which had purported conversations between Bhushan and political leaders Yadav and Singh. Bhushan had claimed that the CD was fabricated. The first analysis done by CFSL in New Delhi had said that the CD was genuine but Delhi police sent it for a second opinion.