Former ICICI Bank managing director Chanda Kochhar’s repeated assertions during questioning that all loans during her regime, including the ones to Videocon, were approved by a committee, and not by her alone, has turned the spotlight back to the controversial first information report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation in 2019.

The CBI’s remand application for Kochhar, her husband and Videocon’s Venugopal Dhoot, said the three accused are required to be further interrogated “to unearth criminal conspiracy with other unknown public servants and unknown private persons.”

The investigative agency is obviously being once bitten, twice shy.

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In the 2019 FIR, it had gone ahead and named as many as six top executives at ICICI Bank, including some who had left the bank by then, as persons whose role “may be investigated” for sanctioning of loans to Videocon in violation of the bank’s credit policy.

This time, however, the CBI has avoided naming them. The reason for the CBI’s cautious move this time is obvious. The 2019 FIR had not only drawn sharp reaction from the banking industry, it had also attracted a sharp rebuke from the then finance minister Arun Jaitley. It was probably the first instance of a senior minister openly criticising the CBI’s way of operating.

A day after the FIR, Jaitley had called the CBI’s move “investigative adventurism” and said one of the reasons for the “poor” conviction rate in India is that “adventurism and megalomania” overtakes investigators and professionalism takes a back seat.

The minister who was then recuperating from an illness in the US, said, “Sitting thousands of kilometers away, when I read the list of potential targets in the ICICI case, the thought that crossed my mind was again the same — Instead of focusing primarily on the target, is a journey to nowhere (or everywhere) being undertaken?”

“If we include the entire who’s who of the banking Industry — with or without evidence — what cause are we serving or actually hurting?” Jaitley had said.

His tweet was later retweeted by Jaitley’s ministerial colleagues, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal.

Just two days before Jaitley’s tweet, Sudhanshu Dhar Mishra, an SP-rank police official of the CBI’s Banking and Securities Fraud Cell (BSFC), who probed and signed the FIR, was transferred to the agency’s economic offices branch in Ranchi.

Some former CBI officers had said at that time that they agreed with Jaitley’s criticism of naming so many top banking officials in the FIR when they have not been arraigned as accused. “This is a very poorly drafted FIR. Probe agencies never make roving enquiries. They should focus on the crime they are probing. This type of investigation will never see an end,” said one of them.

Also read: Chanda Kochhar, ex-ICICI Bank CEO, husband Deepak Kochhar arrested in Videocon loan case

Others had also said naming of the officials was totally unnecessary. The CBI tradition is to name those against whom there is enough evidence. Those who are in the realm of suspicion are mentioned as ‘unknown others’.

After such attacks, the CBI is now obviously more cautious. But one thing is clear: After tasting blood with the arrests of Kochhars and Dhoot and succeeding to get their custody extended by two more days, it now wants to go the whole hog by widening its criminal conspiracy net.