When Central Bureau of Investigation officers were bumbling their way through the Delhi Secretariat, trying to find something against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's Principal Secretary, Rajender Kumar on Tuesday, even those who have been closely associated with the agency couldn't believe what they were seeing.
"I cannot believe that such a top officer is being raided without informing his boss," said a former CBI director, adding, "He is a UT cadre officer which is directly controlled by the Central government, surely they must have been told?''
There is enough in the CBI manual to prove his point but let's just look at a couple of instances from the agency's past. There isn't a dearth of bloopers, as anyone who has tracked the CBI will tell you. One of the more recent ones is from March 2013, just about a day after the DMK pulled out of the UPA alliance.
CBI investigators are all early risers; so on that day at 7 am, a team from their Chennai branch landed up at the house of MK Stalin, DMK chief M Karunanidhi's son and political heir, to assess the cars he owned. Parked in his driveway was a Hummer that his film producer son, Udhayanadhi bought in 2007, and apparently, had missed paying duty on.
So along with the Department of Revenue Intelligence, the CBI decided to raid 40 other locations in and around Chennai.
This was months before the Supreme Court famously called the agency "a caged parrot", but it was difficult not to link the raid with the bitter split the DMK had with the Centre just a day before. Angry DMK workers shouted at the CBI team conducting raids, but it wasn't their slogans which made them retreat. It was public statements from Central ministers.
"I am dismayed," said then Finance Minister and Tamil Nadu lawmaker P Chidambaram who asked his colleague and then minister in-charge of the CBI, Narayanasamy to conduct an inquiry.
Another minister, Kamal Nath also condemned the CBI's enthusiasm and soon, the CBI detectives went back to their offices. Days later, CBI bosses in Delhi explained how their local officer didn't connect the dots and failed to get the timing of the raid right. How it was okayed by bosses in Delhi and whether it was possible to have missed Stalin's name in the list of those being raided, went unanswered.
But then, the CBI doesn't care to answer all questions. Which is why, they have been caught in a losing game of perception and public relations against the Aam Aadmi Party.
Never before has any raided party given real time updates to the media the way Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal provided this week. Never before has the raided party released copies of documents the CBI picked up.
So, while everyone chuckled when the CBI raided A Raja's office three years after he scripted the 2G scam, it is only the Aam Aadmi Party which has called out the ridiculousness of the CBI raiding an officer, eight years after he allegedly committed a crime and far away from the so-called "crime scene''.
AAP's constant challenging forced a radical change in the CBI. They gave two public soundbytes in two days, a frequency unheard of in an agency which hides public documents like First Information Reports. But the more they speak, the more they reveal. After all, it takes some special imagination to tell the press that you have "unearthed" Rs 28 lakh in the bank accounts of an IAS officer.
Unable as yet to show anything concrete against Rajender Kumar, the CBI continues to grill him all day long, telling reporters that they will present all their "evidence'' in court. They also claim they were right in law when they didn't tell Kejriwal that they were raiding and booking his aide. Totally forgetting to mention that their manual also says that they should take bosses into confidence.
That's what the agency itself did when they arrested Judge Shamit Mukherjee for corruption, a few years ago. Even though the arrest was not in the courtroom, they informed the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court. Why? "Because it was the right thing to do," said the officer in charge.
The right thing to do has always been inconsistent for a closed agency like the CBI. No wonder that reporters covering the beat told the CBI press officer on Wednesday evening, "Do you know a parrot which was flying over the building suddenly dropped dead?"
(Sunetra Choudhury is Editor, National Affairs, NDTV 24x7)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.