The Supreme Court Tuesday sought response from CBI director Ranjit Sinha on a plea by NGO Common Cause accsing him of meeting the alleged accused in the coal scam cases.

 

 

 A bench of Chief Justice R.M. Lodha, Justice Madan B. Lokur and Justice Kurian Joseph sought a response from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director within 10 days as counsel for NGO Common Cause Prashant Bhushan drew the court's attention to the shifting stand taken by Sinha to justify his meeting with the coal block scam accused.

 

 Common Cause has sought direction to the CBI director not to interfere in the coal block allocation case investigations and prosecutions being carried out by the agency, and to recuse himself from these cases.

 

 The NGO has also sought the setting up of an SIT to investigate the abuse of authority by the CBI director in order to "scuttle inquiries, investigations and prosecutions being carried out by the CBI in coal block allocation cases and other important cases".

 

 The apex court notice to the CBI director comes a day after the bench of Justice H.L. Dattu and Justice S.A. Bobde, while describing averments by CPIL "serious", had issued notice to Sinha on Monday asking him to respond to allegations that he met accused in 2G cases.  

 

 "There are incontrovertible facts in the public domain which lead to the inescapable conclusion that it is necessary to remove Sinha from the case for ensuring fair and impartial investigations," Common Cause has said in its application.

 

 Referring to the instance of CBI sharing its status report on coal scam probe with the then law minister Ashwani Kumar, the application said that Sinha did not "mend his ways" and "continued to interfere in the CBI investigations in the coal allocation cases by overruling the team of investigation officers and forcing them not to register FIRs and to file closure reports in cases where FIRs had already been registered".

 

 Eventually, the application said, the apex court had to step in and order the registration of as many as 14 fresh FIRs in coal allocation cases. The application said that such moves were criticised by the then Special Public Prosecutor U.U. Lalit (now elevated as apex court judge).

 

 Even now, no effort is being spared in order to delay the registration of FIRs and filing of charge sheets, the application said.