SC monitored Odisha chit fund probe plea ‘not dismissed’

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
New Delhi, Apr 6:

While large sections of the media have reported that the Supreme Court has ‘dismissed’ activist Alok Jena’s petition seeking monitoring of the ongoing CBI investigation into the mega chit fund scam in Odisha by the apex court, the petitioner himself has emphatically denied the reports.

“The honourable court has, in fact, ordered the listing of my case, IA (intervention application) 8, for hearing  on a date when Justice Thakur and Justice Nagappan are on the bench,’” Jena told OST over phone from New Delhi.

A quick check with the Supreme Court website revealed that Jena’s writ petition (413) of 2013, listed three times earlier, is ‘likely’ to be listed on April 27.

The status of the case is clearly marked ‘PENDING’ on the website, corroborating Jena’s contention.

In the light of this revelation, it appears strange that several national level news websites and almost all vernacular television news channels kept parroting the ‘dismissal’ theory ad nauseam all evening.

A little digging up by OST solved the mystery. All the reports published or broadcast had their origins in one source: a leading news agency report filed from Delhi.

Jena claimed that the correspondent of the said agency was not even present in the court during the deliberations and surmised that the latter must have based his report on a secondary – and obviously untrustworthy – source.