CBI: Rotten at the top

It is shocking that two former directors of the Central Bureau of Investigation, the nation’s key arm for probing major crimes, should be placed in the process of facing trial for corruption, money-laundering, and “scuttling” serious Supreme Court-mandated probes. It is evident that we either have a rotten system of appointing leaders of the country’s most important institutions and we select thoroughly undeserving people, or that the entire process, that starts with allegations and ends with a trial, is shot through with infirmities and shakes our faith in basic administration, dispensation of justice, and even politics at the top, for it is at the highest levels of government led by the political executive that heads of institutions like the CBI are selected.

Regardless of the fate of A.P. Singh and Ranjit Sinha, the former brought under the scanner for being the cat’s paw for an unscrupulous businessman who allegedly earned a lot of money through influence-peddling, and the latter for seeking to scuttle the Coalgate probe in the case of certain individuals for a consideration, Parliament can profitably discuss not just the selection process for top appointments but also the methods that enabled the rise of officers up the ladder of the country’s elite services.

It is mind-boggling that those who get the highest points in their annual departmental recommendations for the quality of their work and probity, and eventually reach the top, should allegedly engage in flagrant corruption. There has to be something wrong somewhere. Or, is some of this motivated by political considerations?