oppn parties The Aakar Patel Case: Court Slams CBI

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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. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack

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. 

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