Centre to revisit 2,400 CBI cases

Government has decided to revisit 2,400 CBI cases pending in trial courts for more than 10 years to identify cases that are unlikely to end in a conviction and should be withdrawn.

Government has decided to revisit 2,400 CBI cases pending in trial courts for more than 10 years to identify cases that are unlikely to end in a conviction and should be withdrawn.

HT Image

The others could be put on the fast track.

The decision means that every fourth case investigated by the agency and lying before the trial court would up for a review.

There were 9,928 cases investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation pending trial at the end of December 2010, nearly 7,400 of them relate to corruption.

The decision was taken by the Group of Ministers (GoM) on corruption headed by Pranab Mukherjee at the suggestion of the Central Bureau of Investigation to reduce the large number of cases stuck in trial courts.

The panel agreed to appoint a panel headed by a retired Supreme Court judge to screen the cases.

Former chiefs of the CBI and the Central vigilance Commission would be members of this panel along with a private person of “impeccable reputation”.

“The committee could look at cases pending for more than 10 years, particularly those under the Prevention of Corruption Act and suggest ways for their speedy disposal including withdrawal if need be,” an official report on the decision of the GoM said.

The CBI had last year admitted to a parliamentary panel that there were 438 cases

pending in courts where even the charges had not been framed against the accused in 10 years.

It had attributed the delays in prosecution to a limited number of special courts, 50, set up exclusively to handle the agency’s cases. Government officials said the CBI also faced a problem in finding prosecutors and was short of investigators.