B K Bansal is dead. With him, his 25-year-old son also gave himself to the rope. The twin-suicides that rocked the capital last week came on the back of the similar suicides of the corporate affairs ministry official's wife and daughter. Bansal was accused of taking bribes from executives of Elder Pharmaceuticals to prevent a possible reference to the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) of allegations of irregularities in the company. Bansal was reportedly caught red-handed by the sleuths of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The action was demonstrative of the Narendra Modi government's efforts to root out corruption at all levels. There can be no two opinions about the need to eradicate this social evil.
However, the methods followed have come under criticism following the detailed suicide notes mailed to media organisations by the Bansals. Some commentators have said that CBI is an 'uncaged vulture' and not a caged parrot, as described by the Supreme Court once. Political rivals such as Arvind Kejriwal have opportunistically latched on to a reference to Bharatiya Janata Party leader Amit Shah in the note.
A more useful line of probe would be to find out which are the serious fraud cases that Bansal referred to the SFIO and those he did not during his tenure in this position. Preferably, this should be a time-bound judicial probe as the CBI cannot be the judge of its own case and the credibility of a local police would always be under cloud.
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