Two weeks to probe CBI chief Alok Verma, retired judge to oversee, says Supreme Court

New Delhi:

A three-judge Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph will on Friday hear Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Director Alok Verma’s petition challenging the government's decision to send him on leave and divest him of all powers.

Senior jurist Fali Nariman will represent Verma in the top court while Attorney General KK Venugopal will represent the Centre, and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta will appear for the Central Vigilance Commission.

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The CBI on Thursday had said both Verma and Asthana will retain their position in the agency as director and special director and Nageshwar Rao will remain interim chief till  Central Vigilance Commission examines the allegations the two officials traded.

Advocate Gopal Shankarnarayana, who had filed the petition on Verma's behalf on Wednesday, had sought for an urgent hearing from the bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph.    

"Over the recent past, although all functionaries within the CBI from the investigating officer and the superintending officers up to the Joint Director and the Director have agreed on a certain course of action, the Special Director has been of a different view," the plea said.
Shankarnarayana also challenged the decision of the government by which Joint Director M Nageswara Rao, a 1986-batch Odisha cadre IPS officer, has been given charge as head of the probe agency.

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It alleged that "hurdles posed" by Asthana have now been compounded by his complicity in "concocting evidence" to impugn the reputation of Verma, leading to a separate FIR being registered by CBI which has been challenged by the special director in the Delhi High Court.

"As matters stood thus, the CVC (Central Vigilance Commission) and the Central Government have overnight taken the impugned decisions to divest the petitioner of his complete role as Director CBI and to appoint another individual in his stead. These actions are patently illegal for the reasons...," it said. The petition also said that as the apex court has repeatedly stated that CBI ought to be insulated from the government, the present actions give serious credence to the requirement that the agency be given independence from the DoPT.

In an unprecedented move by the Central government, Verma and CBI's Special Director Rakesh Asthana were sent on leave till further notice and their offices were sealed on Wednesday. Joint Director M Nageshwar Rao, a 1986 batch officer, took charge as the interim chief of the investigating agency with immediate effect.

The feud between Verma and Asthana began after the CBI charged the latter with demanding a Rs 5-crore bribe from Satish Sana, a Hyderabad-based businessman, in return for keeping him out of a money-laundering case against meat exporter Moin Qureshi. In turn, the Gujarat-cadre officer -- who is said to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah -- accused his superior of several offences in a letter to the Union government.

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