The Supreme Court on Monday, issued notice to the Delhi Police Commissioner, seeking a status report on the investigation conducted thus far in respect of the First Information Report filed in the cash-for-votes scam.A Bench of Justices Aftab Alam and R.M. Lodha also issued notice to the Centre on a writ petition filed by the then former Chief Election Commissioner, J.M. Lyngdoh, and 13 others, under the banner of India Rejuvenation Initiative, for a directive to set up a special investigation team to probe the scam as revealed in the article published, based on U.S. Embassy cables accessed through WikiLeaks.
At the last hearing, the Bench asked the petitioners to produce a copy of the FIR registered pursuant to the report of a parliamentary committee.On Monday, senior counsel Rajeev Dhavan, appearing for the petitioners, produced the copy of the FIR, which the court took on record and called for a status report to be filed at the next hearing.
The petitioners, including Air Chief Marshal (retired) S. Krishnaswamy, and Julio Ribeiro, former Commissioner of Police, Punjab and Mumbai, said that on March 23, there was a furore in Parliament after the publication of the article in The Hindu on the July 2008 events.
Quoting the interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, published in the newspaper that this information could be used as corroborative evidence, they said the probe, to be fair, had to be independent.
“The cash-for-vote incident showed the desperate depths to which certain political functionaries and parties stooped to ensure victory on the floor of the House, and these exposures represent both a gross moral degeneration and crass political opportunism of the government and had degraded and disgraced our sacrosanct traditions of parliamentary democracy,” the petitioners said.
Once a prima facie case of bribery was established and parliamentary panel itself had recommended further probe, the government did little to establish the criminal culpability of those whose names were in the public domain as principal actors in this sordid drama, they said.
They said an FIR was registered by the Delhi Police on January 27, 2009; no action was taken so far, though the parliamentary committee gave a report against errant politicians. Hence the present petition for a direction.
Courtesy : The Hindu
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