Diarygate: What we need to know

Imagine, you are a super cop of the country’s premier investigating agency. And you have a fancy residential address. You are currently swamped with  a pile of cases. On top of it, the apex court has delegated to you the daunting task of investigating two scams of the decade — 2G spectrum and coalgate. In such a situation what kind of social life could you possibly have? Can you meet your relatives and friends  every day — or even twice or thrice a week?

Expand your imagination some more. You know many of the accused and their relatives even as you have set out to investigate them. You know them for years and their names keep coming up in the course of the investigations. All the while Big Brother Supreme Court is watching every action of yours. 
What then should be your code of conduct? 

Return now to the real-life situation. Our super cop — CBI Director Ranjit Sinha — has been caught entertaining some of these people, specially the ones whose names are linked to 2G and coal scams. In the Diarygate unravelling, Sinha claims they have been his friends for years. Further, that it is hardly a criminal act to meet friends. Sinha argues that its not even a case of impropriety because he has not manipulated the investigations.

I will later deal with the charge of manipulation in this article. Let’s for the moment see the pattern emerging out of the 2 Janpath visitors’ diary at Sinha’s residence. This pattern is partly reported in a series of media reports,  this newspaper breaking the ‘2, Janpath Diaries’ story earlier this month. But much more is to be said about the inexplicable list of visitors.
First, did these visitors — specially the accused in 2G and coal scams — seek an appointment with Sinha at his residence? If so, why did they want to meet Sinha at his residence and not in his office? The CBI director however claims that he has a camp office at residence — one that was visited by many of  the accused. Does he maintain an official appointments diary at the residence, just like the one he keeps in his office? If so, the appointment diaries, if there are any, would shine some light on the case. 

Of late, Sinha has described all these corporate honchos and politicians listed in the diary as his friends. Among them are Tony Jesudasan, AN Sethuraman, Mahendra Nahata, Moin Qureshi, Vijay Darda and his son Devendra Darda, MP Rungta, Subodh Kant Sahay, Ram Vilas Paswan, Dr Ketan Desai and Ashok Agarwal — all of them or their organisations currently dealing with the CBI in criminal cases. Sinha claims he has known them for years.

In fact, it will not be all that surprising if the above mentioned do turn out to be Sinha’s friends. That would only point to the intricate corporate-politician-police network and collusion nexus that has stripped capitalism of its true ethos of competition and market. The revelation of  frequent visits of several bureaucrats to Sinha’s residence also raises eyebrows. Aradhana Shukla, an IAS officer and the wife of suspended IAS officer Pradeep Shukla, who is in jail in a CBI-initiated corruption case, has visited Sinha at his residence. 

Noida CEO Rama Raman too was among the frequent visitors. Dna sought his response to the expose several times (through phone calls and SMS-es). But so far he has refused to talk. The Rajya Sabha TV CEO Gurmeet Singh Sappal was also a frequent visitor. He told dna that he went there as a reporter. But Sinha did not appear in any of the RSTV reports. Sappal appeared in one talk show on CBI autonomy. That’s all. Even cars belonging to Railway Board secretary and NDMC secretary have their registration numbers in the visitors’ diary.

All these high-profile people in positions of power could have valid reasons to visit Sinha’s residence. But the truth can only be unveiled by proper investigation. 

Last, but not least, there is a list of ‘unknown’ people visiting Sinha’s residence almost every day or at least 4-5 times a week. A few of them have addresses like Kinari Bazaar in old Delhi — the areas which are known as the adda of ‘briefcase’ companies. Significantly the visitors’ diary contains the name of a man who spent his entire life probing the management of coal mines. This too needs a thorough probe.
Let’s now deal with the issue of ‘manipulation’. Did Sinha manipulate the law or not? The revelations in the visitors’ Diarygate have cast a shadow of suspicion on all the actions mandated by Sinha in the 2G and coal scams. At a time when the 2G scam trial is about to end, the CBI, on behalf of Sinha moved a proposal to then CBI public prosecutor UU Lalit (now a Supreme Court judge). He petitioned that new facts pertaining to the case have come to light. And that these new facts contradict the present charge sheet in the case of Reliance Telecom, Swan Telecom and DMK leader Kanimozhi. The CBI proposal urged Lalit to intervene and stop the trial paving the way for new investigations.

Lalit, as his letter reflects, was furious and he questioned the authorship of proposal (or draft) and thereby managed to control some of the damage that would otherwise hit the CBI. In Dayanidhi Maran’s case, the CBI delayed the filing of the charge sheet by one whole year — even after the decks had been cleared by every agency. 

Vijay Darda, another accused and his brother, visited Sinha’s residence several times and the CBI subsequently closed the case against him. If the court seeks detailed explanations for Sinha’s action or inaction, the director could find himself in serious trouble. Arguably, the investigating agency closed the case without offering substantial reasons for such a decision. 

The unravelling of the Diarygate raises serious concerns about the CBI. Undoubtedly, the institution has some of the country’s finest officers. Though rapidly decaying, the CBI is not facing the threat of extinction. True,  the present controversy is a major setback. But the lesson drawn from it is not to allow an individual to take over the institution. 

The challenge now is to salvage the truth from the maze of entries in the visitors’ diary. One important solution could be the Supreme Court taking charge and summoning all relevant documents in the 2G and coal scams for its examination. Importantly, the court should pay special heed to the file notings which could hold the key to uncovering the real story of these scams.   
The author is associate editor, dna