The investigators need to concentrate on the bull’s eye, following the advice of Arjuna in Mahabharata..!
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New Delhi, January 26: “There is a fundamental difference between investigative adventurism and professional investigation. Professional investigation targets the real accused on the basis of actual and admissible evidences. It rules out fanciful presumptions. There is no personal malice or corruption. It targets the guilty and protects the innocent. It secures convictions and furthers public interest”, said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley hailing the Supreme courts decision holding the two-year old insolvency code in its entirety.
The court quashed the petitions which challenged the law saying it was discriminatory. The two-judge bench headed by Justice Rohinton Nariman also upheld the ban on promoters’ bids for the defaulting company undergoing the insolvency process.
“Investigative adventurism involves casting the net too wide including people with no mens rea or even having a common intention to commit an offence, relying on presumptions and surmises with no legally admissible evidence. Adventurism leads to media leaks, ruins reputations and eventually invites strictures and not convictions. In the process, the targets are ruined because of harassment, loss of reputation and financial costs. It costs people their career”, added Jaitley in a blogpost on Friday.
One of the reasons why our conviction rates are poor is that adventurism and megalomania overtakes our investigators and professionalism takes a back seat, he said. He further adviced the investigators to follow the advice of Arjun in the Mahabharat and just concentrate on the bulls eye.
Referring to the ICICI loan fraud case in which the CBI led investigations recently, Jaitley continued to say that sitting thousands of kilometers away, when I read the list of potential targets in the ICICI case, the thought that crossed my mind was again the same. “Instead of focusing primarily on the target, is a journey to nowhere (or everywhere) being undertaken? If we include the entire who’s who of the Banking Industry – with or without evidence – what cause are we serving or actually hurting”, he added.