Supreme Court shields Punjab CM's aide from arrest but lets CBI probe go on

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to halt a CBI corruption case against Rajbir Singh Ghuman, officer on special duty to Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, but ordered that no coercive action be taken while it hears the state government’s appeal.

A bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and P.B. Varale issued notice on the Punjab government’s petition against a High Court order that sent the case to the CBI. “We are not staying the FIR. We are saying no coercive steps may be taken,” the bench said. Its order added that the petitioner “shall however cooperate with the investigation.”

The matter reached this bench after Justice Sheel Nagu recused himself on Friday, when the case was listed before him and Justice Dipankar Datta. No date has been given for the next hearing.

How the case began

The trail starts with the Enforcement Directorate. On 3 August it shared material with Punjab Police and asked them to register a case. According to the ED, a man named Nitin Gohal acted as a go-between for people seeking favours from the state government and Ghuman. The favours alleged include transfers and postings, access to confidential government documents, help with arms licences and other benefits.

Punjab Police held only a preliminary inquiry and registered no FIR. Advocate Nikhil Saraf then filed a public interest petition in the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

On 5 October, a bench of Chief Justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra and Justice Rohit Kapoor directed the CBI to register a case and report within two months. “The material shared by ED prima facie indicated involvement of high public officials in acts of corruption,” the High Court said. It noted that many people had been sent notices in the state’s inquiry but Ghuman had not been asked to join. The CBI registered its FIR in Delhi under the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, naming Ghuman, Gohal and others.

The state filed its appeal in the Supreme Court at about 1:42 am on 6 October.

What each side argued

Senior advocate Vikas Singh appeared for Punjab. In its petition, the state argued that the High Court wrongly treated information shared by the ED under the money-laundering law as making an FIR inevitable, and that it ordered a probe into officials’ decisions on transfers, tenders and policy without the prior approval that Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act requires.

Senior advocate D.S. Naidu, for Saraf, told the court his client faced “vindictive action from the State Government”, and said his property had been demolished. He sought protection for Saraf.

The politics

The case has landed in Punjab months before the state votes in the 2027 Assembly elections. Ghuman was summoned to the CBI office in Chandigarh last Wednesday and did not appear. Mann said the next day that the summons had not been served and that his aide would join the probe if summoned.

He called the CBI’s raid on Ghuman’s camp office a sign that the BJP had begun its election campaign in Punjab, and compared it with cases against opposition leaders in Delhi and West Bengal before elections there. “All allegations are baseless,” Mann said on 8 October. “There is no other party than AAP that has worked to end corruption.”

For now, the CBI can keep investigating. It cannot arrest Ghuman or take other coercive steps until the Supreme Court says otherwise.