Supreme Court: agencies hurry against the ordinary, delay with the powerful

The Supreme Court on Monday, 31 August 2026, put into open words a complaint many litigants make in private: investigating agencies, the bench said, tend to drag their feet when the person under scrutiny holds authority, and move quickly when the target is an ordinary person. The remark came from a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, sitting with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana, while hearing the petition of Sumit Roy, personal assistant to Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee, in the Salboni land-grabbing case.

Justice Bagchi’s oral observation about the Enforcement Directorate’s probe into Leaps and Bounds Private Limited — a company linked to Banerjee that has also figured in the West Bengal School Service Commission scam — was especially pointed. “The less said the better,” he said, recalling that judges of the Calcutta High Court had already expressed despair at the slow pace of custodial investigation in that thread. The Supreme Court’s Monday hearing therefore sat at the junction of a specific pre-arrest dispute and a broader institutional criticism of selective urgency.

The Solicitor General told the court that agencies had been substantially under the influence or control of the accused when the alleged delay occurred, and later clarified the division of labour: the Central Bureau of Investigation handled the School Service Commission investigation, while the Enforcement Directorate pursued the collateral proceeds-of-crime probe. That clarification does not erase the court’s concern; it frames who was responsible for which track when the delay is said to have happened.

The bench directed the Enforcement Directorate and the West Bengal side to produce video and audio records of Roy’s questioning. The purpose, as recorded in the hearing report, was to check whether he was confronted on alleged cash deposits of ₹60 lakh, ₹20 lakh and ₹40 lakh and on other crore-level transactions. Those amounts are part of the confrontation the court wants verified on tape, not amounts the Supreme Court has declared proven.

Roy’s protection from arrest was extended until the next hearing, listed for 7 September 2026. He is challenging a Calcutta High Court order of 6 August that denied him pre-arrest bail in the Salboni case. Until the Supreme Court decides the bail challenge on a fuller hearing, the interim protection remains the operative shield.

The larger public meaning of Monday’s exchange is institutional. Courts rarely state so bluntly that investigative tempo appears to change with the social power of the accused. When the Chief Justice’s bench does so while demanding the raw recording of an interrogation, it is telling agencies that delay itself can become an issue before the court — especially in politically sensitive money and land cases. The Salboni matter and the School Service Commission-linked company probe remain separate procedural tracks; what Monday joined was the court’s impatience with unequal speed.

Readers should not treat the oral remarks as a final judgment on Banerjee, Roy, or the companies named in collateral probes. They should treat them as a rare top-court statement about how power seems to shape investigative urgency, delivered in a live bail matter with a fixed next date and a concrete demand for interrogation recordings.