Rebuked for “crossing all limits”, a two-judge Supreme Court bench that included the Chief Justice went so far as to stay the raids on the liquor vending state monopoly
Inured as it is to being questioned severely by courts regarding its methods of investigation and interrogation, the Enforcement Directorate seems to have gone overboard in its zeal to pin charges of corruption on a massive scale running into Rs 1,000 crores in Tamil Nadu’s liquor corporation, Tasmac.
Rebuked for “crossing all limits”, a two-judge Supreme Court bench that included the Chief Justice went so far as to stay the raids on the liquor vending state monopoly. The repeated raids in Tamil Nadu, that have been going on for some years now, have gained such notoriety as to assume the contours of a political assignment.
There is no denying that sales of liquor, a commodity already slammed by sin taxes, may be a fount of corruption nation-wide. What has irked the SC bench is that in its constant fervour to prove a point against a non-BJP ruled state in which Dravidian parties have enjoyed a monopoly for decades, the ED seems to be violating the federal concept of governance.
The excesses seen in the methodology of investigation simply adds to the commonly held belief that the ED is just an instrument that the rulers at the Centre have used to browbeat opponents. Much like the federal investigation agency, CBI, often referred to as a “caged parrot” by the top court in an obvious reference to the agency being bound to the ruling government of the day, the ED has picked up disrepute.
A case can be made for stanching corruption that has been the bane of India in which politicians have been known to amass astounding wealth at the cost of the people. But it cannot be achieved by employing the methodology of feared agencies such as the Gestapo or the FSB, or the ruling dispensation letting the agencies loose on political rivals.
The conviction record of the ED — known to be quick in filing chargesheets but very slow thereafter in trying to prove any case filed against politicians and bureaucrats beyond doubt to the judiciary — is a dead giveaway. The country’s fraud squad and the federal investigating agencies just do not possess the forensic powers of proving financial frauds beyond reasonable doubt, regardless of how alarming some of the details that get leaked to the media appear to be.
The transgression of limits, usurping a state’s right to probe offences, including graft, the use of third-degree methods against lower-level employees who may be just rubber stamps in a process of fraud and fishing expeditions in the name of probes all go into the making of an ineffectual investigation pattern that often leads to the judiciary rapping the agencies on the knuckles.
The Tamil Nadu Tasmac case, with the corporation itself criminally charged, has become a cause celebre for being at the heart of raids and investigation by various agencies, including the state DVAC, for well over a decade. But, beyond ruffling feathers and causing friction, little has been achieved even if for a moment the belief that raids have proved that corruption may exist.
The raids on the AAP leadership, the case against the Gandhis in the National Herald matter that will be in the courts now and various other probes point to a pattern of political targeting more than any pointed hunting down of corruption by netas. The conclusion is very simple — prove the charges in court or quit raiding people to make harassment the punishment.
