NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday expressed concern over the slow pace of investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate in the coal scam cases against former CBI chief Ranjit Sinha.
A bench headed by Justice Madan B Lokur said, “Progress in the investigations by the CBI and ED in the coal scam cases has been slow.”
The apex court is overseeing the investigation by the CBI against Sinha, who allegedly tried to scuttle the investigation into the coal scam cases.
However, the SIT in its status report stated that substantial progress had been made in the probe against Sinha.
Special Public Prosecutor R S Cheema told the bench that the SIT has widened the scope of probe against Sinha and the visitors at the former CBI chief’s house were more than what was mentioned in the diary and its probe was going on.
He added that the SIT was trying to trace all vehicles which used to come regularly to Sinha’s official residence, and that it would also examine the bank accounts of those who were regular visitors when he was the CBI chief.
“Why is it taking too much time just to find out the owner of the vehicles, when everything now-a-days is online?” asked Justice Lokur.
To this, Cheema responded, “There are few vehicles of whose owners have changed, so we are trying to locate the original owner, which is taking time.”
The court then slated the hearing for the second week of March to see further progress into the investigation.
The apex court had on January 23 last year ordered constitution of a SIT to probe the allegations of abuse of authority prima facie committed by Sinha to scuttle the probe in coal block allocation cases.