Indian Express: New Delhi: Wednesday, July 11, 2018.
A CBI court
in Delhi has ordered an inquiry against the investigating officer of the probe
agency on alleged charges of perjury for suppressing a legal opinion tendered
by the Union Law Ministry in connection with a case registered against an
Indian Revenue Service officer.
The order,
issued on June 28 by special CBI judge Anju Bajaj Chandna, relates to a case
registered against IRS officer Ashok Kumar Aggarwal who was discharged in March
2016 by the trial court after the Delhi High Court quashed sanction for his
prosecution.
Aggarwal, who
served as Deputy Director of Enforcement Directorate, had earlier been booked
by the CBI in two cases.
Judge Chandna
held that CBI investigating officer Sushil Dewan prima facie committed offences
under IPC sections 191 (giving false evidence) and 209 (dishonestly making
false claim in court). She has directed Dewan to appear before the Chief
Metropolitan Magistrate for an inquiry into the matter under sections of the
CrPC. The CMM court will hear the matter on September 28.
“The sanctity
of legal proceedings cannot be allowed to be vitiated by any party, be it
prosecuting agency. It is highly unexpected of an officer of investigating
agency established by law, that he would make misleading and dishonest
statement before the court, but in present case… IO Sushil Dewan deliberately
came out with incorrect pleas and such conduct cannot be taken casually,”
Chandna observed.
The order
comes in connection with the plea filed on July 8, 2016 by Aggarwal, through
his advocate Shubham Asri, for release of documents on the grounds that he
stands discharged from the case and no appeal had been filed by CBI during the
stipulated period. The documents relate to service records and documents seized
by the CBI relating to his assets.
On August 2,
2016, a reply was filed by Dewan, wherein it was submitted that the
“correspondence with the administrative ministry with respect to further legal
action is underway and thus, it would not be prudent to return the seized
documents”.
The court
said that based on the RTI reply Aggarwal received from the Department of
Revenue, the administrative ministry, legal opinion was tendered by the
Minister of Law and Justice on June 8, 2016 ; and that in its legal opinion,
Ministry of Law concurred with the Delhi High Court order to “put quietus to
these proceedings and found no reasonable ground to further agitate in the
matter”.
The court
also pointed out that according to Aggarwal, the RTI reply from the Department
of Revenue stated that the Law Ministry had also received a proposal for legal
opinion from the CBI through its administrative ministry, the Department of
Personnel and Training, for filing a special leave petition in the Supreme
Court on June 8, 2016. The Law Ministry, according to the RTI, tendered the
legal opinion that there was no ground to file a SLP, Aggarwal said.
The CBI,
however, argued that once the Law Minister opined that “there appears no
reasonable ground to further adjudicate the matter in the higher forum”, it was
“proposed to again request DoPT to review the matter and for seeking the
opinion of Attorney General” and that it had put up the correct position before
the court.
But the court
observed that Dewan, “instead of giving clear statement as to the position of
legal opinion so received from the ministry, withheld the important information
and chose to give misleading impression to the court by stating that
correspondence with ministry is still underway”.