Logging In Troubles

The Logbook

• Dec 3, 2012 Ranjit Sinha joins as director, CBI
• 310 page logbook covers period between May 2, 2013, and Aug 16,  2014

Source: Unknown, believed to be either the IB or Delhi police

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The Likely Defence
 

• Logbook fabricated to malign CBI director Sinha. No evidence to suggest he favoured any of the accused.
• Adverse notings by the CBI against many of the alleged visitors
• Chargesheets in 2G case filed before Sinha joined; prosecutors in the 2G case appointed by the Supreme Court
• Cases related to Coalgate supervised by both CVC and apex court; chargesheet filed against Vijay Darda
• There are entries even for periods when the entire family was abroad
• Many of the vehicles numbers recorded in the logbook do not exist

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An argument in defence of scandal-roiled CBI director Ranjit Sinha stunned the unstoppable Arnab Goswami into silence. “If I accuse you of getting paid to malign people on your show, will you stop anchoring this show till the charge is proved?” senior advocate Vikas Singh asked the Times Now anchor on his Newshour programme. He was retorting to Goswami’s suggestion that Sinha step down from office till the cloud over him clears: the media has exposed purported logbooks from his official residence showing Coalgate and 2G scam accused as frequent visitors.

But Singh, who represents Sinha at the Supreme Court, was being valiant in vain. Sinha admitted that he indeed met some people named in the Coalgate and 2G cases at his official residence. There were few takers for his contention that there was nothing wrong in meeting them, that he had not favoured anyone unduly. For a while, it was also said in Sinha’s defence that the logbook might be fabricated. But opinion had already turned against the CBI director. Entries show questionable figures visiting him as many as 70 times in 15 months. For many, this was enough indication of wrongdoing.

From being described as unconventional and outspoken­—even becoming an accidental hero with his ‘caged parrot’ remark—Sinha had turned into a villain and fall guy in September, about two months before his term ends. CBI officers feel demoralised. Some say he let them down; some that he could have been hailed as the best of CBI directors but his indiscretions, alas, meant that it had all been in vain. He had no business meeting people being investigated—that’s what many officers say.

Sinha has many admirers too, who say he stayed clear of cliques, was a hard taskmaster but gave subordinates a free hand. He is known to delve deep into files and remark even on notings 10 or more years old. He is said to have stood up to considerable political pressure and refused to file a false affidavit in Supreme Court that then law minister Ashwani Kumar had not vetted progress reports in the Coalgate scam. The stand-off had led to the minister’s ouster from the cabinet. Another high point of his eventful tenure is the probe into the railway board appointments that led to the resignation of then railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal. One officer recalls how, in June, an investigating team had debated for days on whether to file a case of export fraud against the Adani Group. The reluctance, despite the available evidence against the group, was the result of the Adanis being close to the prime minister. “But he told us, ‘Ghabrana nahin...evidence hai toh register karo (Fear not, if there is evidence, register a case against the company)’,” says an officer.

Sinha went against the opinion of the investigating officer in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case of Gujarat. The offi­cer wanted to name then Gujarat home minister Amit Shah as an accused. But Sinha argued that if Shah were to be named because Gujarat policemen were involved in the case, then the Union home minister could also be named because the inputs on the basis of which the policemen acted were supplied by the Intelligence Bureau, a central agency. Perhaps a sign that Sinha had sensed a change in political winds.

As to the Coalgate affair, the only accused named in the logbook is MP Vijay Darda. But there is no evidence to suggest that Sinha favoured him. Sinha is also expected to defend himself in court by claiming that the 2G cases were approved and finalised by his predecessor. It was the apex court which had vetted the list of prosecutors and was monitoring the trial in the sensitive case. “The two ADAG (Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group) officials  may have gone to his residence to extend personal invitations to various events, but certainly 70 times in 15 months is a gross exaggeration,” says a member of his legal team.

The logbook does suggest that many of the visitors spent between five and 15 minutes at 2, Janpath. The sprawling bungalow with a lawn the size of a football field would take a few minutes to merely drive up to the portico and drive out. Add a few minutes for the visitors to be ushered in and for the director to join them, argued the lawyer, and you would need to stretch your imagination to suggest that finer legal points were discussed in the remaining minutes.

Curiously, on several pages of the logbook, entry and exit timings are rec­orded without any name or vehicle number. Around 50 Delhi vehicle numbers mentioned in the logbook, say CBI officials, do not exist in the records of the Delhi transport department. The logbook also has entries of visitors during a time (April 8-13) when Sinha and his family were abroad.

But while there is ground for suspicion that Sinha is victim of a hatchet job executed or sponsored by other state agencies, possibly the Intelligence Bureau, there is little sympathy for him. There is general agreement that he was indiscreet in meeting people. While CBI insiders as well as people close to him debunk gossip that he has been a party animal (he is said to be more comfortable having a drink at home with close friends), rumours persist about his foreign jaunts and over his close friends extorting money from businessmen and traders using their proximity to him. 

Some blame Sinha’s politically ambitious wife for his travails. Daughter of a highly regarded IPS officer, she is said to have fostered a coterie of her own. She did not help matters when she sought to file nomination papers to contest as an independent candidate against the BJP’s Shatrughan Sinha during the 2014 general elections. Many of the visitors named in the logbook may actually have called on her, suggest insiders, while some media reports also have it that it was at her instance that security guards from the ITBP started maintaining the logbook.

While the judiciary takes a call on the seriousness and validity of the charges against the director, Sinha himself gave no sign of giving up without a fight. He would continue to keep an open house and let the government do what it could, he had defiantly declared. He was also quick to file cases of perjury against lawyer-activist Prashant Bhu­shan and the NGO Common Cause, taking the fight to his critics even as Bhushan  wrote  to the prime minister  demanding that Sinha be sacked.

The CBI’s expertise lay in fixing and unfixing people, former coal secretary P.C. Parakh had quipped, after being booked by the CBI in Coalgate. He would be having the last laugh as he sees the CBI director himself being fixed.