Monday, January 24 2005 17:27 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Wanting to know the progress made by CBI in its probe into the allegations of corruption made by slain National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) engineer Satyendra Dubey, the Supreme Court today (Jan 24, 2005) asked the agency to file within four weeks a status report of its investigation.

A Bench comprising Justice Ruma Pal and Justice C K Thakker gave this direction on a petition filed by NGO 'Parivartan' alleging that the authorities were taking no action against the contractors and mafia which was cornering most of the sub-contracts in the Golden Quadrilateral project portion passing through Bihar.

The Court, while dealing with the Dubey murder case, had almost forced the Centre to take steps to protect the "whistle blowers" saying without them corruption in public life would not come to light.

The Government had come out with an Ordinance making the Central Vigilance Commission as the protector of "whistle blowers" who would be dealing with all complaints relating to corruption in public life.

However, counsel for the petitioner NGO, Prashant Bhushan contended that though the issue pertaining to whistle blowers have been taken care of by the Court, the authorities were not taking any action regarding allegations of Dubey about "massive corruption" in the award of sub-contracts in the Golden Quadrilateral project joining the four metros.