The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is probing the role of former finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram in the 2006 takeover of telecom operator Aircel by Maxis. Its methods are entirely flawed. The CBI asks why the investment was cleared by the FIPB, a committee of bureaucrats that handles foreign investment proposals, and not taken right up to the Cabinet committee that handles economic affairs. This is a ridiculous argument: the cutoff for investments that the finance ministry could clear through the FIPB was Rs600 crore at that time. The face value of the total investment that Maxis proposed to do was half of that at Rs300 crore. So, the finance ministry and its secretary, representing it in the FIPB, were perfectly in order to clear the proposal. It is irrelevant if the final, market value of the company soared to Rs3,500 crore-plus. All that matters for the rule books is the face value of the initial investment.In any case, the CBI is being used as a political hand puppet by the BJP government to hound certain political leaders. One is West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and assorted elected members from assemblies in several eastern states, who are being probed for their alleged complicity in a Ponzi scheme hatched by a company called Saradha. Chidambaram could be the latest victim of this political witch hunt. But the CBI’s record of investigation, evidence gathering and prosecution is woefully shoddy.In any case, the charges in the Maxis-Aircel deal against Chidambaram are so badly framed and legally inadequate that it is unlikely that they will ever stand in a court of law. A commercial transaction between two parties, cleared by the FIPB, should never have come in for an investigation. The case is bogus and should be dropped.