CBI move to speed up cases

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, AUG. 21. Declaring an all-out war against pendency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has asked its officers to probe cases within a year of registration unless they needed to be pursued abroad.

If a Letter Rogatory seeking assistance from a foreign country is not executed within two years, the investigating officer should decide whether the case can be disposed of without waiting for the result of the Letter Rogatory.

In a meeting of the CBI Joint Directors from all over the country held last week, the senior officers were told that a chargesheet must be filed if possible with available evidence, and later a supplementary could be filed after investigation abroad.

During the last three months, about 75 cases which were two years old had been disposed of and in a number of other cases the CBI had completed investigations and was waiting for sanction for prosecution. The CBI Acting Director, Mr. P.C. Sharma, asked the Joint Directors to personally see that the process of sanction was expedited.

Under the new dispensation in the CBI, the number of preliminary enquiries (PEs) had come down over the past three months. In a number of PEs, decisions had been taken to either convert them into regular cases or to close them, CBI sources said here.

With a conviction rate as high as 70 per cent, the CBI top brass laid emphasis on giving utmost attention to the cases under trial. The agency filed chargesheets in two major economic offences in a record period of three months, sources said.

While one case relates to the Rs. 137-crore payorder scam by Mumbai stock-broker, Mr. Ketan Parekh, the other involves the Century Consultants Case. The CBI arrested in France an accused in the Indian Bank scam cases who allegedly caused a loss of Rs. 468 crores to the bank.

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