The CBI's credibility has shrunk to a new low under its current director Ranjit Sinha, whose tenure was repeatedly mired in controversy. The SC struck a final blow today when it asked him to recuse himself from the 2G probe

For all practical purposes, the Central Bureau of Investigation Director, Ranjit Sinha, is a lame duck from today (20 November) with the Supreme Court asking him to recuse himself from the 2G spectrum investigations. Not that the lame duck has too many days left to quack; his term ends less than two weeks from now. He had started his two-year tenure on 3 December 2012.

The court, which had in the past called the CBI a “caged parrot”, effectively delivered a vote of no-confidence in him today when it observed that "all was not well” with Sinha’s stewardship of the agency and that the allegations against him made by an NGO, the Centre for Public Interest Litigation, had “some credibility”. A key allegation is that he may have been trying to help some of the 2G scam accused.

Hence the need for him to recuse himself from one of biggest corruption scandals in Indian history.

Sinha has been hitting the headlines regularly, ever since he took charge on 3 December 2012. The BJP had opposed his appointment then because the Lokpal Bill, which called for a collegium to appoint the CBI director, was then in the works.

Sinha’s stormy tenure, which was frequently marked by controversy, hit a nadir when the NGO filed a list of visitors that he seemed to be meeting regularly. The report was splashed across the front pages of the media, and Sinha protested that the information had been leaked unfairly. The Supreme Court had at, one time, appeared to sympathise with him and asked the petitioner to disclose the name of the whistleblower.

But at today’s hearing, the Supreme Court itself rejected Sinha’s charge that the CBI’s DIG Santosh Rastogi was the mole who leaked information to the petitioner.

That he would leave in a cloud of controversy was certain when it was disclosed last September that his doors were open to all kinds of people, including many people that his agency was investigating.

In a specific case involving his meetings with executives of the Anil Ambani Group, accused in the 2G scam, Sinha had admitted he met them but said he did not do them any favours. But the huge laundry list of people he met repeatedly in his home told the world that something was not quite right with these meetings.

The Indian Express, for example, said in a report on 5 September that all kinds of people toting names like Shiv Pal, Shiv Babu and Mithilesh had visited Sinha at home more than 100 times in a year. Usually, this kind of frequency is limited to close relatives or bosom pals.

But, as we had noted at that time, there is nothing wrong if the CBI Director meets anybody in his office, and there are records kept of the conversation, but surely beyond very close friends or relatives, such an open-door policy at home can lead to serious conflicts of interests? Just as judges cannot meet the accused or their relatives at home (they can only do so in court) to avoid accusations of impropriety, prima facie one should consider these visits to the CBI Director’s home as “fishy.”

But Ranjit Sinha saw nothing wrong in such interactions. Another Express story, in fact, quoted him as saying that he was going to keep his “gate open and have already given instructions (to that effect)… let us see what the government can do.”

But this attitude didn’t stand scrutiny, as the Supreme Court’s observations today indicated. When someone investigating a crime meets those being investigated and also many others so frequently, he is violating a fundamental rule of fairness and objectivity: that one’s actions must be seen to be above reproach. It is true that the CBI Director cannot be assumed to have done favours just because he met lots of people lots of time at home, but the very fact that he was running open house at home rather than the office can seem wrong.

Sinha tried to cover his bases by pointing out that he was investigating powerful people, hinting that they must have plotted this disclosure. The Times of India quoted him then as saying this: "I have taken action against powerful people in high-profile cases, including Intelligence Bureau officers in cases like Ishrat Jahan fake encounter, against corporate executives, government departments, banks and other agencies. Has anyone touched people at that level ever before?”

There is no denying that many powerful people would want the investigations against them to stop, but this is precisely the reason why Sinha should have been careful who he met and how many times. He compromised his independence by making his actions suspect.

These discretions did not immediately cost Sinha his job, but they certainly damaged his public standing. The CBI Director is selected based on a short-list prepared by the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), and there are no provisions for his removal before the end of his term.

The BJP is said to be planning a change in the law to make it possible to remove a CBI Director for misbehavior, but this law is going to be contested in courts.

As Sinha walks into the sunset, he leaves behind an already damaged institution in a further state of despair. The next man had better be someone with the highest credibility.