2 Janpath Diary: Supreme Court to hear plea against CBI director on Monday

The crucial hearing on the plea against CBI director Ranjit Sinha will be held on Monday in the Supreme Court, which will take on record the petitioner NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation's affidavit refusing to disclose the name of whistleblower due to the risk factor involved in it.

The NGO CPIL, which handed over the original diary detailing the entry and exit of visitors at Sinha's official residence 2 Janpath here is seeking CBI chief's recusal from the probe against Reliance Telecom in 2G case for his alleged meeting with the officials of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) in the past several months.

dna first broke the story on September 2 that top officials of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group met CBI director Ranjit Sinha at least 50 times in 15 months at his official residence.

The frequency of their visits increased this year when Sinha moved a proposal to re-investigate the case against Reliance Telecom and Swan Telecom on grounds that some new facts have come to light. His proposal was objected by the then special public prosecutor UU Lalit, who has been elevated to Supreme Court as a judge.

On September 3, CPIL's lawyer Prashant Bhushan cited dna's report and brought to the court's notice that visitors' entry register at Sinha's residence is "very disturbing" and contains "explosive material" in 2G spectrum allocation scam against Reliance Telecom.

The bench comprising Justice H L Dattu and Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde that is hearing the high-profile 2G specrum allocation scam involving among others former telecom minister A Raja and DMK leader Kani Mozhi had asked Bhushan to file an affidavit to support his claim.

On September 8, finding the allegations serious, Justice Dattu, who has been designated as the next chief justice of India after present CJI R M Lodha demits office on September 27, had sought Sinha's response and had also asked Bhushan to submit the diary in a sealed cover before the court.

Filing his response, Sinha had denied the allegations and questioned the very maintainibility of Bhushan's plea saying the diary was "forged' to disrepute him. His counsel demanded that Bhushan disclose the name of the source referring to a Supreme Court rule.

In the last hearing, the bench had asked the lawyer for CPIL to give in a sealed cover the name of the whistleblower who leaked the information. The CPIL has refused to reveal the name of the whisleblower arguing that "disclosure of identity will endanger the whistleblower's life."

The members of CPIL including noted senior lawyers Fali S Nariman, Shanti Bhushan and Anil Diwan had held a meeting on September 17 and passed a resolution maintaining that in the past several whistleblowers in the country have been killed due disclosure of their identities.

"This decision is also in light of the fact that in India, several informants and activists have unfortunately had to lose their lives for complaining against corruption. People like Satyendra Dubey, S Manjunath, Amit Jethwa, Shehla Masood etc were murdered for exposing corruption after their identity had become public. Several others and their families have had to face harassment of all kinds. Therefore, the CPIL cannot tell its counsel to disclose the source and thus expose the source to great risk, especially considering the seriousness of the issue and the entities involved," the CPIL affidavit said.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, Sinha has filed a plea seeking registration of an FIR for alleged perjury against CPIL's two lawyers – Bhushan and Kamini Jaiswal, advocate-on-record in the case.

Sinha's contention is that on its affidavit CPIL said Bhushan got a copy of the entry register from a reliable source, but orally he told the court on September 8 that some unknown persons had given them the diary. Sinha argues this is contradictory to Bhushan's earlier submission.

Sinha's plea is also likely to be heard by the court on Monday.