Going after sleaze

The Central Bureau of Investigation hopes that its simultaneous raids across the country will act as a deterrent against corruption, if nothing else.

V. VENKATESAN in New Delhi

ON September 30, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) conducted its fourth nation-wide special drive this year to catch corrupt public servants. The drives have been marked by simultaneous raids on the offices, residences and other premises of public servants of doubtful integrity in departments considered "corruption-prone". During the latest drive, CBI officials conducted searches at 198 places in 54 cities and towns and registered 59 cases against 70 public servants. Four of these cases are against officers at the level of Joint Secretary and above.

There are two aspects to the raids. The first is their inconsistency with the need to maintain secrecy, so that an accused does not get an opportunity to destroy evidence that would implicate him or her. Was the information about the latest drive leaked, as alleged in some quarters?

U.S. Misra, CBI Director, admitted that leaks could take place in such a large exercise, but he promised to look into the charge seriously. G. Mohanty, CBI spokesperson, claimed, however, that the CBI collected prima facie evidence from each of the 70 officials raided during the drive; if the `leaks' helped the accused, the CBI teams would have returned empty-handed, he suggested. But the question whether the CBI could have found much more than it did had there been no leak remained unanswered.

Indeed, as a CBI official admitted, leaks are implicit in the process of nation-wide raids. The CBI has to arrange for a large number of independent witnesses to be present at various places during the raids, in order to meet the legal requirement, and these witnesses cannot be relied upon to maintain secrecy about the timing of the raids. Besides, CBI personnel are denied leave prior to a nation-wide simultaneous drive as it would require enough staff for planning and execution. This gives ample indication to anyone within the CBI who wants to leak the information about a likely raid. To meet the requirement of the Prevention of Corruption Act before raids, the CBI sends the files concerned for sanction to various departments. This too, helps the leak of information about an impending drive.

Raids are part of the investigation process of the CBI, and each of the organisation's 79 branches have their targets - in terms of number of cases to be registered and investigated - fixed at the beginning of the year, on the basis of their performance. Thus there would be raids taking place at different times at different places, if there is no nation-wide drive. Each branch is free to plan raids independently of national drives.

Still, the CBI goes in for nation-wide simultaneous raids despite the risk involved because it serves some of its reasonable purposes. One is the media attention that a national drive gets as compared to isolated raids by one branch or the other. The objective is not to get publicity for its own sake but to use the publicity, and the consequent embarrassment likely to be caused to the accused, as a possible deterrent against corruption. As a CBI source pointed out, if corrupt officials attended lavish parties hosted by favour-seekers earlier, the drives have forced them to keep off such parties and avoid getting noticed. Thus, there has been a marked decline in instances of blatant corruption.

Secondly, the drives help the CBI motivate its investigating officials and provide them an opportunity to prove themselves. "If there are no drives and no deadlines, laxity would be the consequence," a CBI official said. In a sense, the drives appear to be the only means to motivate personnel in an organisation that has been deplorably understaffed over the years.

The CBI's sanctioned strength is about 6,000, but it carries on today with only three-fourths of this because of an apparent lack of interest among police personnel from the States to join the organisation, as that would in effect mean loss of influence, professional independence and fringe benefits. Because of the lack of incentives, the only personnel joining the CBI on deputation are those from the paramilitary forces, who have had no exposure to investigation.

The CBI Director admitted in August last year to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice that the large number of vacancies in the rank of Investigating Officers hampered investigations. At the Investigating Officers' level, which has a sanctioned strength of 4,078, there were 621 vacancies as on March 25. The Director told the committee that lack of incentives and special allowances in the CBI was the prime reason why it had not been able to attract the best talent through deputation from the State cadre. The committee has recommended that the government take appropriate remedial measures.

The other aspect of the drives is the continued public cynicism about their impact on the magnitude of corruption. This stems from the inordinate delay in securing conviction. The CBI conducted three special drives this year, in February, April and June and registered 70, 51 and 48 cases respectively.

In none of these cases it has been able to complete investigations and file chargesheets. This is because of the complexity of disproportionate assets (D.A.) cases, which involve a lot of witnesses and documents. That property was acquired in the names of relatives of the accused needs to be established and the links need to be substantiated, and this takes time.

There were three special drives in 2004 and one in 2003. The CBI registered 170 cases, of these only 29 have reached the chargesheet stage as of June. The courts can be blamed for delayed trial only if investigations are completed and chargesheets filed in time; hence, if the CBI feels hampered in its investigations for want of adequate staff strength, then the government alone has to be blamed.

The CBI has its other limitations as well. It has found to its dismay that even as it made its presence felt, it has not made a clear dent on the level of corruption. This is because, as a CBI official claimed, the corrupt have become smarter, and now follow ingenious methods to evade the law. `Trap' cases - in which public servants are caught red-handed while demanding and accepting bribe - are the easiest to solve, and the CBI completes investigations in these cases faster than in D.A. cases. However, owing to a huge backlog of cases in the trial courts and the consequent delay in the trial proceedings, the accused manage to influence the witnesses.

Of late, the CBI has found that it is unable to match the skills of bribe-takers. Today a bribe-taker no longer uses the phone to fix the deal, in order to avoid the conversation being recorded by the investigating agency; he does not touch the currency notes passed on to him, for fear of leaving his fingerprints; and avoids independent witnesses who accompany bribe-givers. In some offices where rampant corruption is the norm, touts are appointed to collect bribes on behalf of officers, and the touts redistribute the bribes to them later.

In D.A. cases, the CBI has found that senior officers park their bribe money with their chartered accountants, who are outside the purview of the CBI as they are not public servants. Even if the chartered accountants keep diaries, they are of no evidentiary value, as proved by the collapse of the Jain Diaries - Hawala case involving prominent politicians. Instead of acquiring assets, these officers receive gratification in kind, such as air tickets, payment of hotel bills, or even a short holiday abroad. Some corrupt officers even buy numbered blank stamp papers with retrospective dates to forge fake loan agreements in order to explain their sources of disproportionate assets.

Does the CBI have any answers to outwit these smart public servants? Not yet.