Petition against CBI chief Subodh Jaiswal is a PIL? Bombay HC asks registry to check – India Today

A bench of the Bombay High Court has raised a jurisdiction issue over the petition filed against CBI Director Subodh Jaiswal and asked the high court registry to check if it should be treated as a writ petition or a public interest litigation (PIL).

The division bench of Justices Gautam Patel and Madhav Jamdar asked the registry to keep the petition before an appropriate bench after two weeks.

The division bench headed by Justice Patel hears writ petitions while the division bench headed by Chief Justice Dipankar Datta hears PILs.

Advocate Satish Talekar, who was present in the hearing on Monday, told the court that the petition was very much within the jurisdiction of the bench.

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However, Justice Patel said, “You don’t have a personal interest in this matter. The petitioner is not seeking any personal relief. If you were saying that you have been unfairly superseded, then we can hear it but what you are saying is more general. It should be a PIL. This is an issue of jurisdiction.”

Retired Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Rajendra Trivedi had approached the high court, praying for the quashing of the order by which IPS officer Jaiswal was appointed as the director of CBI. The plea had also prayed that Jaiswal should be restrained from performing his duty as the CBI director until the plea is disposed off.

Trivedi also requested that the court should call for records and proceedings regarding the appointment of Jaiswal.

At the core of the entire plea is the issue of Telgi scam, which was worth crores in the 1990s. Telgi was accused of printing fake stamp papers in the government security press at Nashik and selling them at heavy discounts. He was arrested in 2001 and had been convicted in some cases and was acquitted in a few. He finally passed away in a Bengaluru jail in 2017.

It was on November 2, 2002 that Jaiswal was appointed to head the Special Investigating Team (SIT), which investigated the scam. During the course of various hearing in courts, strictures were passed against Jaiswal for the way the investigation was done in the scam. The case was finally transferred to the CBI on March 15, 2004.

The petition filed through Talekar states that an officer, who is to be appointed as the director of the CBI, must necessarily be a seniormost IPS officer having an experience in the investigation of anti-corruption cases with impeccable and unbreachable credibility. Trivedi states that Jaiswal has no experience of investigating anti-corruption cases as he was never attached to the anti-corruption unit of the force.

Trivedi had earlier challenged the appointment of Jaiswal as Maharashtra director general of police (DGP) as well. On the other hand, Jaiswal had filed a plea in the Bombay High Court for expunging those strictures against him by the trial court in Pune, which the Maharashtra government has now opposed. That plea is likely to be heard in due course of time.

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