New Delhi: The Supreme Court has severely criticised the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) while quashing the Human Rights body's directive to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to initiate disciplinary action against four officers for allegedly illegally detaining a telecom official during probe into a corruption case.

A Bench comprising Justice S Rajendra Babu, Justice P V Reddi and Justice H K Sema yesterday (Dec 11, 2003) gave a clean chit to the four officials – N C Dhoundial, Narayan Jha, P K Panigrahi and B N Singh – who were probing a case of corruption against telecom official A K Sinha at Ranchi.

Sinha had approached NHRC alleging that he was illegally detained between March 25, 1994 to April 3, 1994 and that the harsh treatment meted out to him by the officials aggravated the cancer he was suffering from.

The NHRC, without giving an opportunity to the officials to state their side of the story, held that though the judicial remand of Sinha was obtained by the agency on April 3, he was in the de facto custody of the officials without authority of law and recommended disciplinary action.

The Commission, justifying its jurisdiction over the case, said the violation of Human Rights was a continuing wrong rpt wrong unless due reparation was made.

Rejecting the theory of "continuing wrong", the apex court said, "The commission thus tries to clutch at the jurisdiction by invoking the theory of continuing wrong, which, as we held earlier, cannot be invoked at all."

PTI