NEW DELHI: Criticised by the Supreme Court as a “caged parrot” of its masters, CBI Director Ranjit Sinha on May 9 said whatever the apex court stated was correct. Asked about the scathing remarks of the Supreme Court which had said that CBI was a “caged parrot” that “speaks in its master’s voice”, Sinha told reporters here, “Whatever the Supreme Court said is correct.” The court had come down heavily on CBI yesterday for sharing the status report on coal allocation scam probe with Law Minister Ashwani Kumar and officials of PMO and Coal Ministry.

CBI had then issued a statement, saying, “CBI assures the Supreme Court of thorough and qualitative investigation into Coalgate. It will follow directions of Supreme Court in letter and spirit.” However, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said that the court had just made a comment and it was not an order. Moreover, the government had done nothing wrong, he added. “It is a comment by the court and not an order.

If it was a written order, then we would have reacted to it. The government has done nothing wrong… The investigation has not been affected and there was no intervention in the investigation,” Digvijaya Singh told reporters. The court made the observation on Wednesday on Sinha’s second affidavit filed on Monday which stated that law minister Ashwani Kumar and senior officials of the Prime Minister’s Office and the coal ministry had made certain changes in the report on the allocation of coal blocks.

The bench also asked the government whether it was contemplating a law to make the working of the CBI independent and insulate it from extraneous intrusion and interferences. It also made it clear that choice was with the government and in case government dithered, the court would step in.