Inder Malhotra

April.15 : Two Features of the sordid Jagdish Tytler affair are particularly depressing and disgraceful. The first is the Congress Party's malodorous flip-flop. With brazen insensitivity, it first gave Mr Tytler a ticket for the Lok Sabha elections even though two years ago he had been forced to resign from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Cabinet because a judicial commission had indicted him for his role in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots during which nearly 3,000 Sikhs were massacred in the nation's capital. At then the Congress developed cold feet and ordered Mr Tytler to withdraw his candidature (and meted out the same treatment to another 1984 accused, Sajjan Kumar). Why?

For the simple reason that the pent-up fury against the successive Congress governments' failure over 25 years to punish any perpetrator of the horrific carnage had suddenly burst on the streets as a result of a Sikh journalist's unethical and unacceptable act of throwing a shoe at Union home minister P. Chidambaram, instead of using his computer or camera to give vent to his indignation.

On this Dr Singh's take was that the reversal of its earlier decision on Mr Tytler showed that the Congress was "sensitive" to Sikh sentiments. He had then quoted a Persian saying roughly equivalent to "better late than never". But wouldn't it have been much, much better had the Congress leadership not taken the dubious decision in the first place?

Secondly, whether by coincidence or design, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) appears to have become a participant in the ploy to award Mr Tytler the party nomination. This is sinister because the CBI is not a political outfit but a crucially important institution of the Indian state. As if on cue, it submitted its report on the Tytler case to the chief judicial magistrate (CJM) on election-eve, even though the matter had been hanging fire for a long time. The report was top-secret and meant only for the magistrate's eyes. Yet, almost instantly all TV channels were "breaking the news" that the premier investigation agency had given Mr Tytler a "clean chit". It is this so-called clean chit that has enraged Sikhs and many others across the country.

That is where the Prime Minister's statement acquires a sharper edge. He said that he was "neither consulted, nor informed" about the "clean chit". Any pretence on behalf of the errant agency that its duty was to submit its report only to the CJM would just not wash. Only a short while earlier when it had transpired that before submitting its report on the disproportionate assets case against Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav, the CBI had handed it to the Union government, the agency's director, Ashwini Kumar, had publicly stated that the rules governing the agency demanded this. What has become of those rules now? An even more disturbing question arises: since the Prime Minister was kept completely in the dark and the CBI blandly issued the "clean chit", could it be that there are elements in the present power structure that have the audacity to bypass the head of the government and manipulate the CBI?

The BJP - which has gleefully seized the issue which it feels would make it impossible for the Congress to say much about the 2002 communal killings in Gujarat - has called the CBI the "Congress Bureau of Investigation". This is at best a half-truth that can often be worse than a downright lie. The real and bitter truth is that all governments of all political hues have ruthlessly and remorselessly politicised the CBI and exploited it for partisan purposes.

The few CBI professionals who have tried to resist this dangerous trend have been transferred out; the vast majority has succumbed and frequently been rewarded with post-retirement sinecures. To make matters worse, political parties, when in Opposition, attack the ruling party or coalition for "misusing and abusing" the CBI and other Central police organisations. But when in power, every party or coalition acts strictly according to the established, pernicious pattern. To expect that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would combine one day to make the CBI and similar institutions the servant of the law, not of the politicians in power, would be a classic example of triumph of hope over experience.

A former Chief Justice of India, J.S. Verma, has best summed up the appalling, indeed shameful, record of the CBI. "It is", he writes, "too much of a coincidence that in sensitive matters, the outcome of CBI investigations invariably depends on the political equations of the accused with the ruling power, and it can change without compunction with the change in that equation. The nadir was reached with the somersault in the CBI's stand witnessed in the apex court… which invited caustic comments from the court but (to) no effect".

The reference here clearly is to the case of Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, briefly mentioned above. When the Congress and the Samajwadi Party were treating each other with contempt, the CBI was exuberantly for prosecuting Mr Yadav for possessing assets disproportionate to his ostensible income. But as soon as his party saved the UPA government from collapse in the confidence vote, the CBI petitioned the Supreme Court for permission to withdraw the case. Because the matter is still sub-judice, further comment must be withheld.

What is true of the case against the Samajwadi Party leader is equally true of the Babri Masjid demolition case against senior BJP leaders, the case against Mayawati in relation to the Taj corridor, and the infamous St. Kitts case in which the notorious self-styled godman Chandraswami and several others were in the dock. At every stage, in every case, the CBI has trimmed its sails according to the prevailing political winds.

Life's ironies, like the CBI's misdeeds, are endless. Let me mention just one: in the mid-1990s, then Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda appointed as CBI chief Joginder Singh, whose most visible qualification was that he belonged to the Karnataka cadre and was obviously liked by Mr Deve Gowda. The other day Mr Singh accused the former Prime Minister of trying to interfere with the CBI's investigations and of ordering him to declare a witness "unreliable". Mr Deve Gowda has rubbished the charge. Who do you believe?

Inder Malhotra