Wife-swapping case: Supreme Court dismisses plea for CBI investigation

The SC on Thursday, while cautioning the high courts from ordering a CBI probe mechanically, rejected the plea of Ms Sujatha Ravi Kiran of Kochi seeking a CBI probe into the charges of wife-swapping and sexual abuse against her husband, Mr Ravi Kiran and others.

A bench of Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and Justices R. Banumathi and Uday Lalit also dismissed her plea to transfer the pending criminal case from a Kochi court to a court in Delhi. The bench, however, directed the Kerala government to constitute a special team of police officers headed by an officer not below the rank of a DIG of police to investigate the matter. The petitioner Sujatha in her complaint had made allegations of wife-swapping and also implicated a few names.

The bench said that we deem it necessary to emphasise that despite wide powers conferred by Articles 32 and 226 of the Constitution, while passing any order, the courts, must bear in mind certain self-imposed limitations on the exercise of these constitutional powers. The very plenitude of the power under the said Articles requires great caution in its exercise. We are of the view that the case does not entail a direction for transferring the probe from the state police/special team of state police officers to the CBI.

Insofar as the question of issuing a direction to the CBI to conduct an investigation in a case is concerned, although no inflexible guidelines can be laid down to decide whether or not such power should be exercised but time and again it has been reiterated that such an order is not to be passed as a matter of routine or merely because a party has levelled some allegations against the local police.

It said this extraordinary power must be exercised sparingly, cautiously and in exceptional situations where it becomes necessary to provide credibility and instil confidence in investigations or where the incident may have national and international ramifications or where such an order may be necessary for doing complete justice and enforcing the fundamental rights. Otherwise the CBI would be flooded with a large number of cases and with limited resources, may find it difficult to properly investigate even serious cases and in the process, lose its credibility and purpose with unsatisfactory investigations. We are of the view that the case in hand does not entail a direction for transferring the investigation from the state police/special team of state police officers to the CBI.