New Delhi: Asking Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to do some introspection, former Prime Minister V P Singh today (Oct 26, 2004) said the probe agency should evaluate whether a case is supported with sufficient evidence to enable it to stand in the court of law.

"This will ensure that money and time is not wasted," he told reporters a day after a Delhi court exonerated the controversial Godman Chandraswami in St Kitts forgery case.

Singh said, "It has been the history of the CBI that it has not succeeded in Indian courts and today's order is like most of the cases. It leads to wastage of time and money and the Hawala case is a classic example."

However, Singh said he stood vindicated as handwriting experts had told the trial court that his and his son's signatures were "forged" in the St Kitts case.

CBI had alleged that some political bigwigs had made an attempt in 1989 to sully V P Singh's image by forging certain documents to show that his son Ajeya Singh had a secret bank account of $21 million with the First Trust Corporation Bank in St Kitts islands.

Referring to the new "proposal" of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf that India and Pakistan consider the option of identifying some "regions" of Kashmir on both sides of LoC, Singh said without going into the merits or demerits of the statement, he would want Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to continue the Indo-Pak dialogue and "talk innovatively".

On the issue of shifting polluting industries from the residential areas of Delhi, he said an early decision should be taken as it involved lakhs of workers.