High Courts should not order probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) solely on the basis of letters received by it from various private parties, the Supreme Court held on Thursday [State of West Bengal v. Jashimuddin Mondal].
A Bench of Justices BR Gavai and KV Vishwanathan held that such an exercise of entrusting an investigation to the CBI can be done only in very rare cases when the court is satisfied that the State police cannot do justice to the case.
"No doubt that the High Court, while exercising its powers under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, is empowered to entrust the investigation to the CBI. However, for doing so, it has to come to a reasoning as to why it finds that the investigation by the State Police is not fair or is partisan. Merely on the basis of some letters, such an exercise is not warranted," the top court said.
It, therefore, set aside an order of the Calcutta High Court dated April 19 by which the High Court had affirmed the CBI probe into allegations concerning appointment in schools by Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA).
The Court was hearing an appeal filed by the West Bengal government against the Calcutta High Court decision.
On April 9, a single-judge of the Calcutta High Court ordered CBI probe into the appointments. This directive was based on allegations received through multiple letters from residents of the Darjeeling hills accusing GTA officials, including former GTA chairperson Binay Tamang, of making illegal appointments under political pressure.
The High Court order pertained to the alleged illegal appointment of 700 to 1,000 employees including teachers within GTA during Tamang’s tenure as its administrator from 2017 to 2019.
The direction by the single-judge was upheld by a Division Bench of Justices Harish Tandon and Madhuresh Prasad on April 19.
This led to the appeal before the Supreme Court.
The top court conceded that High Courts can indeed order a CBI investigation under Article 226 of the Constitution but underlined that the same cannot be solely on the basis of letters received by it.
"This Court has consistently held that such an exercise of entrusting an investigation to the CBI by the High Court has to be done in very rare cases," the apex court stated in its order.
There has to be cogent reasoning for the High Court to order such a probe, the Supreme Court said.
In the present case, there is not even a whisper as to why the single-judge found the investigation by the State Police to be unfair or partial so as to find it necessary to direct an enquiry to be conducted by the CBI, the Supreme Court concluded.
Hence, it set aside the orders passed by the single-judge and the Division Bench and remanded the matter back to the single-judge to be decided afresh.
Senior Advocates, AM Singhvi and Neeraj Kishan Kaul along with advocates Sanjay Basu, Astha Sharma, Piyush Agarwal, Amit Bhandari, Srisatya Mohanty, Shrivalli Kajaria, Shreyas Awasthi, Debojyoti Das, Ritwik Mohapatra and Varun Tyagi appeared for the State of West Bengal.
Senior Advocates Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya, Rauf Rahim and Menaka Guruswamy along with advocates Kunal Chatterji, Samim Ahmad, Ali Asghar Rahim, and Shekhar Kumar appeared for the respondents. Advocate Vikram Hegde appeared for the West Bengal board of secondary education.
[Read Judgment]