SC's interim stay on CBI investigation against former minister Ramlal Jat, government had challenged HC's decision

The CBI investigation against the veteran Congress leader and the previous state minister Ramlal Jat the Additional Director General of the Police Anand Srivastava and the remaining accused has been granted an interim stay by the Supreme Court. The Rajasthan High Court had ordered a CBI investigation against them and the state government had moved the Supreme Court against it. The state government had objected and argued that the state police were competent enough and investigate the issue fairly. The state government reiterated that the CBI investigation should be done in rare cases and the CBI should not be made a regular option instead of the state police investigation.

At the same time, the state police have been alleged of partiality by the aggrieved person Parmeshwar Joshi in defense of the direction of the High Court, yet the Supreme Court, agreeing with the submissions of the state government, has granted an interim stay of the direction of the High Court. The government side submitted to the Supreme Court that the High Court had passed the case of the investigation to the CBI based on the involvement of a former minister Ramlal Jat and the brother of an ADG rank officer. The state government explained to the court that the aforementioned ADG officer had no involvement in the investigation because the officer had been posted solely at the non-crime branch, yet the High Court had termed the case politically-influenced with no evidence of it. The High Court at the same time also did not put any concrete evidence that the state police is prejudiced and not capable of investigating.

In fact, by the order of the court, a case was registered in Karera police station of Bhilwara against Arvind Srivastava alias Manish Dhabai, resident of Jaipur, Shyamsundar Goyal, resident of Mathura, Chandrakant Shukla, resident of Ghaziabad, Rajkumar Vishnoi, resident of Jodhpur and Jitendra Dhabai, resident of Jaipur. It alleged that all of them together conspired to steal excavator machines, dumpers, diesel air compressors, lathe machines, and tech machines from Joshi's mine between 2018 and January 2021 and destroyed them in Udaipur and Kerala.

The case was filed by the complainant against former revenue minister Ramlal Jat, Suraj Jat, Puranlal Gurjar, Mahipal Singh, Mahavir Prasad Chaudhary, and Suresh Jat. It was alleged that the accused stole machinery and vehicles from the mine and when the case was registered with the police, during the investigation one of the accused presented a fake rental agreement. On the basis of this alleged fake document, two police officers submitted a negative final report in the case.