CBI won't get down to business immediately

The State government may have announced a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the mysterious death of IAS officer D K Ravi, but it would take the premier agency quite some time to formally take over the case as certain procedures must be followed first.

Acting on the government’s order, Chief Secretary Kaushik Mukherjee or Additional Chief Secretary (Home), S K Pattanayak, will write a letter to Union Home Secretary detailing the decision to order the CBI probe and request him to take necessary steps in that regard. 

According to Mukherjee, the letter would be sent in a day or two but official sources insisted that would be done on Tuesday itself. “The case has been taken out of the CID’s purview with immediate effect,” Mukherjee stated.

Once the Union Home Secretary gets the State government’s letter, he will write back to it with the information that the Centre had accepted the request for the CBI probe. Meantime, the Centre will direct the CBI director to take over the case, a senior IPS officer, who had a stint with the CBI, told Deccan Herald. Once the Centre agrees, the evidence gathered by the local police and the CID will be handed over to the CBI, the sources added.

The CBI director, after receiving the order, will constitute a team and name its head who would be the Investigating Officer (IO). The IO will then collect all the details and formally begin the probe.

Direction may change
The CBI will be free to decide the direction of the case. In Ravi’s case, there are two options before it. One, the agency can study details of the CID  investigation and continue the probe from there without changing Section 174 (police to enquire and report on suicide, etc) of the CrPC. If the CBI smells something fishy going by the statements of anybody close to the deceased, it can invoke a different section, register a fresh case and begin the probe from there, the officer said.

While the CID took up the case as a suicide, Ravi’s family suspect murder. Even that suspicion could be enough for the CBI to register a fresh case under Section 302 (murder) of the IPC and begin the investigation.

The officer said nothing could be ruled out at this point in time and registering a fresh case was the sole discretion of the CBI’s IO.

The officer insisted that the CID had carried out the probe “with extreme caution” given its sensitivity. Most of the examinations have been videographed and there was no closed-door questioning. Therefore, the CBI may not change the sections invoked by the CID, he hoped.