NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday said that all cases arising out of the probe into Madhya Pradesh’s Vyapam scam would be taken over by the CBI and directed the agency to appoint public prosecutors within three weeks to conduct the trial.
While accepting the request of Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar to grant the agency three weeks to appoint public prosecutors, a Bench headed by Chief Justice H L Dattu said all 212 Vyapam cases would be looked into by the CBI, irrespective of the fact that the state’s SIT and STF have filed chargesheets in 78 of them.
The issue of shortfall of CBI officials for taking over the investigation was also addressed by the court, which directed Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi to do it at the earliest.
The Attorney General also sought three weeks to come back with a clear-cut proposal on filling the vacancies of investigators in the CBI, which requires a mandatory training of at least two years.
“You need trained investigators. It takes two years to train them and I do not have a pool of investigators,” Rohatgi told the Bench, which posted the matter for further hearing on September 11.
The AG told the Bench that when the matter was first heard in the apex court, 185 FIRs were registered in the scam. It has now gone up to 212 and there are chances that the number would rise further.
After the Bench sought his view on the twin issue of shortfall of CBI officers and public prosecutors, senior advocate K T S Tulsi said the probe agency should consider one FIR as the lead case to unearth the larger conspiracy and file a consolidated chargesheet instead of separate ones.
Tulsi, along with senior advocates Vivek Tankha and Indira Jaising, was appearing for various people, including senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh, who had sought a CBI probe into the Vyapam scam and alleged deaths connected with the scam.
The Attorney General had earlier said a request would be made to West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, where the CBI sleuths are involved in investigating Saradha and Vyapam scams respectively, to send 200 state cadre officials on deputation with the agency.
The apex court had on July 31 told the CBI to inform it in three weeks about taking over of investigation of maximum number of cases in the Vyapam scam.