Early next month, the Supreme Court (SC) will evaluate the performance of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). In particular, it will evaluate the agency’s success rate in investigation and prosecution in terms of bringing cases to their logical conclusion, a parameter used around the world.
A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and M.M. Sundresh said on September 3, 2021 that it is not enough for the agency to just lodge a case and conduct a probe but also to ensure that prosecution is done successfully. The apex court directed the CBI director to place before it the number of cases in which the agency was successful in getting the accused convicted.
The court initiated the above exercise pained by the inordinate delay of 542 days in filing an appeal by CBI.
This delay sadly would pale in comparison to the mockery of law seen in the Satyam case, where the CBI has even after 2,300 days not challenged the bail granted to Ramalinga Raju, two PricewaterhouseCoopers auditors and seven others, despite a special lower court finding them guilty of serious offences and sentencing them to seven years in jail.
Defeats SC’s intent
Delay in trials reduces the efficacy of the system and faith in rule of law, especially when the rich and powerful are involved. Kiren Rijiju, the Union law minister, has recently said that justice delayed beyond three years is justice denied.
In its Asian Resurfacing of Road Agency v CBI (2018) judgment, the apex court had plugged a common loophole that was used hitherto to delay trials. Stays can now be granted only for six months unless extended by a speaking order justifying an extraordinary situation.
The CBI’s inaction in not even challenging the bail granted more than six years ago to Raju and others makes a mockery of the legislative intent and the SC’s directions.
Quick recap of Satyam
The Satyam fraud of more than Rs 7,000 crore was confessed by its chairman, Ramalinga Raju, on January 7, 2009.
Stung by the biggest accounting scandal till date, the Union government swung into action and replaced its board of directors.
The CBI filed a chargesheet on April 7, 2009. The SC ordered fast-tracking of the trial and set July 31, 2011 as the deadline.
On April 9, 2015, a special sessions court in Hyderabad convicted Ramalinga Raju, his brother, the-then CFO and internal audit head and two Price Waterhouse Auditors of various serious offences including cheating (420 IPC), forgery for purpose of cheating, (467 & 468 IPC), falsification of accounts (477A IPC), criminal conspiracy (120B IPC) and sentenced them to seven years’ imprisonment with heavy monetary fines.
The LIC alone had suffered a loss of Rs 950 crore due to the scam.
Within a month, Raju and others were released on bail by a metropolitan sessions court.
Satyam founder B. Ramalinga Raju. Photo: Reuters
Mockery of law
In a judgment pronounced on September 7, the SC in Shakuntala Shukla Vs State of UP cancelled the bail granted to those who were convicted by a trial court for murder. The judgment also contains an important ruling: Once the accused has been convicted by the trial court, there shall not be any presumption of innocence thereafter.
Several judgments of the SC have earlier held serious economic offences to be on par with heinous crimes like murder, rape, dacoity, etc. Serious economic offences involving forgery, cheating, etc., can dent the economic spine of the nation and can result in an economic crisis.
In its 2017 judgment in Parbatbhai Aahir vs State of Gujarat, the SC had stated that if the prosecution against economic offenders is not allowed to continue, “the entire community is aggrieved”. Satyam certainly falls in this category.
When Raju and others were sentenced to seven years imprisonment in April 2015, the CBI’s special public prosecutor had described the sentence as “inadequate” and said that the agency will appeal it in the sessions court. That it has not done so far is all the more glaring, given that all those who were convicted had secured bail within a month of sentencing.
Raju, PricewaterhouseCoopers auditors and others who were convicted, who do not even have the benefit of presumption of innocence, continue to roam free for more than six years!
Waste of public funds and precious judicial time
To unravel the Satyam scam, the CBI had for the first time formed a multidisciplinary investigation team (MDIT). Its officials travelled to several countries to chase the case.
The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) had submitted a 14,000-page report in April 2009 to the government, confirming falsification of accounts and found two PricewaterhouseCoopers partners guilty of connivance.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had separately charged all the accused under Section 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
The special sessions court’s order convicting Raju, the two PricewaterhouseCoopers auditors and seven others ran into 971 pages. A total of 236 witnesses were examined. More than 150 pages of the judgment had to be devoted only to list the 3,228 documents that the court pored over in six years.
With them granted bail, a humongous amount of public funds and precious judicial time has been wasted with no accountability for dereliction of duty.
SC must intervene suo-moto
To sustain the confidence of the common man in the rule of law, it is imperative that the SC intervenes to check the mockery that has been made of the law so far. The CBI should be directed to challenge forthwith the bail granted to Raju and the others who were convicted. The case must be taken to its logical end in a time-bound manner, which will also boost the morale of many diligent officers.
The performance of the ED and the SFIO must also be appraised. Satyam is a classic example of “too many cooks spoiling the broth” with no accountability. Coordination between different agencies like the CBI, the ED and the SFIO needs to be streamlined to avoid duplication and leverage each other’s strengths to enhance efficiency. Adequate resources and infrastructure must be provided to them.
Premium on value of time
In a recent judgment, the SC ordered the Railways to pay Rs 30,000 to a man who missed a flight from Jammu to Srinagar because of a four-hour delay. Extrapolating this, the penalty in the Satyam matter due to the waste of the lakhs of man-hours spent by the investigating agencies and the judiciary would run into a few hundred crores.
An immediate stop should be put to the colossal amount of public funds that are wasted in investigations and prosecutions which start with much fanfare but invariably fade into oblivion without reaching their logical conclusion. Ultimately, society suffers, economic offences continue unabated due to the absence of a strong deterrent and the whirlpool of litigation grows bigger, further choking an already overburdened system.
Sarvesh Mathur is a senior financial professional, who has worked as CFO of Tata Telecom Ltd and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
