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NEW DELHI: After former coal secretary P C Parakh slammed the CBI in his book last year, former Trai chairman Pradip Baijal has alleged in his book that the agency forced him to implicate industrialist Ratan Tata and former Cabinet minister Arun Shourie if he wanted to save himself.Probed in several enquiries and FIRs since 2010 including the 2G spectrum scam, disinvestment of Hindustan Zinc and Laxmi Vilas Hotel, the retired bureaucrat ripped into the CBI and claimed that it “harasses upright civil servants and political opponents of the government in power”.He made a special mention of the UPA-2 government, alleging that the previous regime gave “unrestrained powers to the CBI to deal with their political opponents, hoping to cover up their own sins by forcing CBI directors to make choices in their favour. I too suffered in many cases”, he claimed. Baijal wrote that the CBI was aggressive against him during the enquiries, which he likened to a witch hunt. “They (CBI) would alternately threaten to harm me and my family and then dangle a carrot of sparing me if I implicated Ratan Tata and Arun Shourie,” he said in the chapter ‘The 2G scam and a retired bureaucrat’s ordeal’.The CBI was probing Baijal in several cases including the 2G scam, enquiries arising out of Niira Radia tapes in which Tata group companies were also being probed. The CBI has closed most of the probes as it did not find any evidence.“In the 2G case, they (CBI) had told me that there was an open and shut case against me, and an FIR would be filed soon, and I would be arrested. Perhaps the CBI officers were trying to treat their bruised egos at the instance of their old masters. They had warned me in each case that I would be harmed if I did not cooperate,” he claimed.“This was suspiciously similar to Dayanidhi Maran’s threats in 2004. It only dawned on me later that perhaps this was being done either by Dayanidhi Maran and A Raja, acting together or by corporates who were trying to protect their self-interest. Dayanidhi Maran knew exactly what I discussed with the PM. I can only surmise that they were all working in tandem, possibly along with the PM (referring to Manmohan Singh), (P) Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal at different stages, and were guiding the CBI enquiry, getting files removed and, making false statements in the media to make a case against the erstwhile Trai,” Baijal wrote.The 1966 batch Madhya Pradesh cadre IAS officer’s book ‘The Complete Story of Indian Reforms: 2G, Power and Private Enterprise – A Practitioner’s Dairy’, gives a detailed account of his interaction with the CBI and its officers over the years for the probes, which he claims caused him a lot of damage in terms of his reputation, his health, family, finances and his self-esteem.Baijal also attacked two former directors of the agency, A P Singh and Ranjit Sinha, in his book. “The CBI was set up with the intention of containing the increase in incidents of corruption and manipulation. However, over a period of time, a number of aberrations have crept into the functioning of the organization and the institution has deteriorated into an instrument of state power, particularly during the terms of the last two directors, A P Singh and Ranjit Sinha,” he wrote.He questioned the CBI probe in the disinvestment of properties. “In disinvestment, most cases were taken to high court/Supreme Court, and cleared. Yet some cases went to CBI due to huge noises in the Parliament,” he wrote, adding, “Some cases were started even after 10-12 years of the action. I then started wondering whether the CBI was the ultimate arbiter and not the government, CAG, HC and SC.”While talking about the role of CBI, Baijal also asked why CBI directors who took either malafide or blatantly wrong actions in some of these cases should not be probed.