Ranjit Sinha, former CBI director who presided over some of the agency’s most contentious years, died early today. He was tested positive for Covid the day before.
Ranjit Sinha, 68, was a 1974 batch Bihar cadre IPS (Indian Police Service) soldier.
Prior to his appointment as CBI chief in 2012, Mr. Sinha led the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), the Railway Protection Force, and held senior roles in the Central Bureau of Investigation in Patna and Delhi.
In 2013, Mr Sinha was in charge of the CBI, which was famously identified by the Supreme Court as a “caged parrot that talks in its master’s accent.”
Mr Sinha said at the time, in response to the damning descriptor that has dogged the CBI for years, “Everything Supreme Court said is right.”
He was being investigated for allegedly abusing his position to stymie an investigation into a bribery case concerning the sale of coal fields to private companies.
When a Congress government headed by Manmohan Singh was in office, the ruse was carried out.
The CBI filed a case against its own former leader in 2017 on the Supreme Court’s orders to probe his suspected meetings at home with the suspects in coal scam cases.
Another fiasco emerged when he was the CBI director and declined to consider a closure report in the excessive wealth case against former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, ordering a reinvestigation that ultimately led to the closure.
