CJI’s word of caution to CBI echoes a Madras HC verdict which attempted to free the ‘caged parrot’

The public clamour in courts for a CBI investigation is losing reverberance, and will die unless the agency breaks its “nexus” with the political executive, CJI Ramana said

Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana has warned India’s premier investigative agency, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), that its aura of reverence has grown dull.

The agency is under “deep public scrutiny”. Its “actions and inactions” have raised questions about its credibility. The public clamour in courts for a CBI investigation — once a byword for impartiality — is losing reverberance, and will die unless the agency breaks its “nexus” with the political executive, the top judge said.

Recently, a Bench led by the CJI did not hand over the Lakhimpur Kheri case to the CBI, opting to form its own Special Investigation Team. The Supreme Court had once famously described the CBI as a “caged parrot”.

The erosion of faith in the Supreme Court and the High Courts, voiced by the CJI, may dent the image of the CBI, considering the fact that the higher judiciary can use its extraordinary powers to bypass state consent and transfer an investigation from the police to CBI to ensure justice is done and seen to be done.

The CJI’s advice to agencies like the CBI to snap ties with their "political masters" or lose credibility echoes a Madras High Court judgment of August last year which forensically investigated the reasons behind why the CBI is its "master’s voice”. The August 2021 judgment of the High Court (HC) narrows the reasons down to two — lack of resources and lack of autonomy. The High Court Division Bench led by Justice (now retired) N. Kirubakaran said its judicial exercise was “an attempt to release the caged parrot”.

In its 32-page judgment, the HC pointed out that though CBI has a 60% conviction rate and has investigated numerous sensitive cases of larger ramifications from the Jain Hawala Scandal to the Bofors scam to Bhopal gas tragedy to 2G spectrum and coal scams to the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, its work was restricted to a few cases due to lack of resources and personnel.

“The number of cases handled by CBI is just equivalent or less than the cases handled by a single police station in the country,” the High Court said