In her assets case, Maya gets timeout from SC until November 3

While the Supreme Court has postponed till November 3 the hearing on the disproportionate assets case against Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati...

While the Supreme Court has postponed till November 3 the hearing on the disproportionate assets case against Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, senior members of her Bahujan Samaj Party have met Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and demanded that a Parliamentary committee be set up to examine what they say is a witch-hunt by the agency.

The BSP’s call comes after several of its MPs were observed waving folders of bulky documents during the trust vote debate. The documents, it now transpires, were copies of internal opinions of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) containing interpretations of officials on the evidence collected by the agency over a five-year period. Opinions that were later over-ruled by the agency’s senior officers.

As The Indian Express first reported, the CBI itself is ready with its chargesheet in the DA case but has been held back by Mayawati’s affidavit, on which the apex court is yet to pass an order.

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The latest developments in the DA case now pose a predicament for the CBI. For one, Director Vijay Shankar is set to retire in July end. The Director, who inherited the 2003 DA case as one of his most complex probes, is understood to have “signed off” the Mayawati file in mid-May. The filing of the chargesheet in Lucknow, however, will now be the responsibility of his successor.

The documents that the BSP MPs waved in Parliament show a conflict of opinion within the CBI on the nature of evidence. Eventually, the top CBI brass overruled the Investigating Officer, the Deputy Legal Advisor and the Joint Director who had concluded that the evidence was “weak.”

CBI officials claim that these opinions only present “half the CBI’s” case. And that the Joint Director in question, subsequently, gave another lengthy opinion, following which the CBI’s Additional Director, Director of Prosecution and, finally, the Director himself gave “speaking orders” on the nature of evidence.

In its proposed chargesheet, the CBI has described the increase in Mayawati’s assets as “meteoric” and alleged that she was making political capital of the case “to escape from the law of the land.”