U.K. begins processing request in CJI case

NEW DELHI, JULY 8. The British police has begun processing the Indian request to probe whether a document which originated from London and created controversy over the age of the Chief Justice of India (CJI), Mr. A. S. Anand, is a forged one, informed sources said here today. The CBI, after completing its investigations in India, had sent a letter rogatory through the External Affairs Ministry recently to Britain for a thorough probe into the matter.

The CBI had sought the help of the Scotland Yard sleuths to check the genuineness of a certificate purported to have been issued by the General Council of Bar of England showing his year of birth as 1934 though all other documents showed it to be 1936.

The British police, after receiving the request from the CBI, began processing it and the agency was expecting to receive an information soon from them, the sources said. They said that recently a CBI team visited London and held discussions with their counterparts in the Scotland Yard and cleared some of their doubts.

However, no one from the CBI was able to comment on this.

The document purported to have been sent by the council on September 4, 2000 to Sohul and Company first appeared in former Law Minister Mr. Ram Jethmalani's recent book ``Small men, big egoes''.

The case was transferred from police to the CBI as per a Supreme Court direction and the CBI re-registered the case under Sections 465 (Forgery) and 469 (Forging to harm reputation).

The CBI has also sought some more time from the trial court before submitting its report. The agency, during its investigations in the country, had questioned eight persons including the publisher of Mr. Jethmalani's book, the sources said.

Some journalists had also been examined to know the source of the document published in some dailies, the sources said. A CBI team had also quizzed the publisher of a magazine in Jammu, which first published the allegedly forged document, the sources said.

- PTI

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