'Shield the guilty': Punjab and Haryana High Court hands CMO corruption case to CBI after police sat on ED letters

A court has now said, in effect, what the file already showed: when the police are asked to investigate the Chief Minister's own office, they deliberate in circles. On October 5, the Punjab and Haryana High Court directed the Central Bureau of Investigation to register an FIR and probe alleged large-scale corruption involving senior Punjab officials, after finding that the Punjab Police had engaged in prolonged, circular deliberation on Enforcement Directorate material that appeared designed to shield the guilty.

The ED had written three letters to Director General of Police Gaurav Yadav, dated July 24, July 31 and August 7, naming Rajbir Singh Ghuman, Officer on Special Duty to Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, along with alleged associates Nitin Gohal and Bir Devinder. The agency alleged interference in administrative transfers and postings and in government tenders, the classic cash-for-transfers economy in which a posting has a price and a tender has a toll. It urged the state police to register an FIR. The police did not.

Advocate Nikhil Saraf's public interest litigation carried the matter to the High Court, arguing that an investigation by Punjab Police or the state Vigilance would lack independence when the allegations reached into the Chief Minister's Office. A bench of Chief Justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra and Justice Rohit Kapoor accepted that central argument. The CBI has been asked to submit its report within two months, with the state directed to render full assistance. The court also noted, with disapproval, sudden demolition proceedings initiated against the petitioner's property after the PIL was filed, marked by undue hot-haste.

Politically, the order lands on a government that came to power promising radical honesty. Congress leader Pratap Singh Bajwa welcomed the probe and demanded the Chief Minister's resignation. BJP leader Ravneet Singh Bittu called it a test of the Aam Aadmi Party's claims, saying the man who promised a corruption-free Punjab must now answer questions about his own office. Those are partisan words and should be read as such. The court's words are the harder problem for the government, because they concern not the allegations alone but the refusal to investigate them.

An FIR is not a conviction, and the CBI probe will have to prove what the ED letters allege. But a High Court does not transfer a case because the paperwork was slow. It transfers a case when it concludes the normal machinery cannot be trusted to move. For two months, Punjab will watch whether the investigation its own police would not start can be done by the agency its court had to call in.