india

Updated: Nov 19, 2018 13:36 IST

A senior CBI officer who investigated the agency’s special director Rakesh Asthana for corruption before he was shunted out will have to wait for his petition to be heard by the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi declined an early hearing to a petition by Manish Kumar Sinha, a deputy inspector general-rank police officer, who has challenged his transfer after last month’s midnight removal of CBI boss Alok Verma. Sinha’s lawyer, who mentioned the case before a bench headed by Chief Justice Gogoi this morning, told the judges that he wanted to bring some shocking facts to the top court.

“Nothing shocks us,” Chief Justice Gogoi shot back, without going into the merits of the case.

The Supreme Court has already taken up a batch of petitions on the bitter war within the agency, beginning with a petition filed by the exiled CBI boss Alok Verma against the government order sending him on compulsory leave.

Last week, the judges asked Verma to give his comments on a secret Central Vigilance Commission report against him. Verma’s was to deadline end at 1 pm . Today, he asked the top court for more time to file his response. The bench, however, made clear that it will not shift the schedule date of hearing and asked him to file his response “as quickly as possible” during the day itself to enable it to peruse the reply.

Chief Justice Gogoi had then made it clear that the top court first wanted to establish the facts about Verma’s removal before getting into the legal aspects about his removal and the other transfers.

Alok Verma and Rakesh Asthana were stripped of their responsibilities on October 23 after their running feud threw the federal agency into disarray. Asthana had written to the cabinet secretary on August 24, alleging interference by Verma in sensitive cases and claimed that the director had taken a bribe. The cabinet secretary then asked CVC to look into the matter.