Ex-CBI officer Thiagarajan calls SC judgment historic

CHENNAI: For 31 years, former CBI superintendent of police V Thiagarajan lived with the guilt of failing to record the confession of AG Perarivalan verbatim, which would have let the latter walk out a free man much earlier. “There was a lapse and you are responsible for it, and when you come out, you get all the brickbats... It’s an absolution of your lapse,” Thiagarjan said when asked how he lived with it.

The officer, in a 2013 interview and later in court, said he did not record the statement of Perarivalan in which he said he didn’t know why he was asked to buy batteries (which were used in the bomb that killed former PM Rajiv Gandhi). This was a critical piece of evidence because Perarivalan had no knowledge of the plot to kill the former PM. Thiagarajan had said then: “If he (Perarivalan) did not know that there was going to be a killing, how can you make him (a) party to the killing?”

Thiagarajan, who recorded the statement of the accused in the assassination case in 1991, said he felt like an insignificant part of the system at that time. He said he carried individually the burden of his omissions and commissions, for which the system too was responsible.

“Again, I insist that it’s not an alibi for your individual lapse. As an individual, you are responsible for your omissions and commissions. Having said that, there are institutional and systemic dimensions too,” he said.

“A slip-up can happen if you are investigating as a team... things are in flux. The investigating agency collects, assesses, and evaluates evidence, and when further evidence comes up, you go back and reappraise the older ones. In that process, it is quite likely you commit a slip-up. Anybody can commit a slip-up somewhere and that will result in the miscarriage of justice, if not subversion of it,” he said.

Thiagarajan said the SC would not have referred to his disclosure in freeing Perarivalan. “They have scrupulously refrained from mentioning that portion.” Calling the judgment historic, he said: “It not only released a man after 30 years but also reaffirmed the role of the Governor and the powers of our State in a federal setup.”