oppn parties The Aakar Patel Case: Court Slams CBI

News Snippets

  • Sikh extremists attacked a cinema hall in London that was playing Kangana Ranaut's controversial film 'Emergency'
  • A Delhi court directed the investigating agencies to senstize officers to collect nail clippings, fingernail scrappings or finger swab in order to get DNA profile as direct evidence of sexual attack is often not present and might result in an offender going scot free
  • Uniform Civil Code rules cleared by state cabinet, likely to be implemented in the next 10 days
  • Supreme Court reiterates that there is no point in arresting the accused after the chargesheet has been filed and the investigation is complete
  • Kolkata court sentences Sanjoy Roy, the sole accused in the R G Kar rape-murder case, to life term. West Bengal government and CBI to appeal in HC for the death penalty
  • Supreme Court stays criminal defamation case against Rahul Gandhi for his remarks against home minister Amit Shah in Jharkhand during the AICC plenary session
  • Government reviews import basket to align it with the policies of the Trump administration
  • NCLT orders liquidation of GoAir airlines
  • Archery - Indian archers bagged 2 silver in Nimes Archery tournament in France
  • Stocks make impressive gain on Monday - Sensex adds 454 points to 77073 and Nifty 141 points to 23344
  • D Gukesh draws with Fabiano Caruana in the Tata Steel chess tournament in the Netherlands
  • Women's U-19 T20 WC - In a stunning game, debutants Nigeria beat New Zealand by 2 runs
  • Rohit Sharma to play under Ajinkye Rahane in Mumbai's Ranji match against J&K
  • Virat Kohli to play in Delhi's last group Ranji trophy match against Saurashtra. This will be his first Ranji match in 12 years
  • The toll in the Rajouri mystery illness case rose to 17 even as the Centre sent a team to study the situation
Calling the case not 'rarest of rare', a court in Kolkata sentenced Sanjay Roy, the only accused in the R G Kar rape-murder case to life in prison until death
oppn parties
The Aakar Patel Case: Court Slams CBI

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2022-04-07 15:06:32

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.

In a country where the likes of Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi have look-out notices issued against them only after they manage to flee the country, the likes of Aakar Patel are arbitrarily stopped at airports and not allowed to go abroad to deliver lectures at prestigious institutions. That what the CBI did in Patel's case was not right has been proved by the order of the special CBI court in Delhi which ordered the CBI to "immediately" drop the lookout notice and asked the CBI Director to issue a written apology to Patel to lessen the "mental harassment" he has suffered.

The CBI employed a trick to stop Patel from going to the US. After he had got a specific order to go there from a court in Gujarat, the agency dug up another case related to alleged money laundering by Amnesty India (Patel was the chief of the NGO in 2019-2020) through which it had put him on the 'exit control list' which meant that he could not leave the country. He was thus denied a boarding pass at the immigration counter of the Bengaluru airport and prevented from travelling to the US.

The court categorically said agency should have foreseen the consequences on the rights of the affected person before the lookout circular was issued and it should not have been issued "merely on the basis of the apprehensions arising out of whims and fancies of the investigating agency".  The court also reminded the agency that Patel had suffered monetary loss due to its actions. It also asked the agency to fix accountability of concerned officials in this case.

Aakar Patel is a fierce critic of the NDA government. He writes newspaper columns and has also published books which criticize Prime Minister Modi and the NDA government. He alleged that the lookout notice was issued just a month after his book "Price of Modi Years" was published in November 2021. This is line with the NDA government's policy of harassing critics in various ways. But the government has to realize that for every person who endorses its policies and actions, there will always be another person who will not do so. In fact only 1 in 3 Indians vote for the BJP. Hence, the other two do not approve of its policies. So the government must learn to live with criticism.