The court, on November 1, had rejected his bail plea on medical grounds saying the senior Congress leader does not need hospitalization as all his vitals are normal.
The Delhi High Court, on October 31, had directed the AIIMS Director to set up a medical board to give its view on Chidambaram's health, who is suffering from Crohn's disease and is currently lodged in Tihar jail in the INX Media money laundering case.
The court also directed that Chidambaram's medical check up be done regularly.
All this is heartening, but one of the directions of the court to jail authorities to provide clean surroundings, mineral water, home-cooked food, protection from mosquitoes to Chidambaram, totally disregards "equality before law" for citizens as embedded in the Indian Constitution.
By no stretch of imagination, equality can be extended to confer special privileges for a select group of people.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, was right in his submission to the court, that Chidambaram does not require a sterile environment based on a report of AIIMS Medical Board, which was constituted on the court's order to examine the senior Congress leader's health condition.
Chidambaram's lies
Time and again, Chidambaram has been caught lying. His list of lies in Ishrat Jahan case is much talked about in the country.
Former Home Secretary of India, GK Pillai, had busted Chidambaram's lie about deleting a reference to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terror group from the second affidavit filed in the Supreme Court naming Ishrat as a terrorist.
When Chidambaram was asked about the first affidavit, he feigned ignorance about it, but the lie was busted by Times Now. The national channel accessed the copy of the first affidavit which had the then home minister's signature on it.
The document was also signed by the chief of investigative agencies.
Pillai also busted Chidambaram's lie that he had made some editorial changes in the (second) affidavit. He said the affidavit was drafted by Chidambaram. There is a huge difference between editorial changes and drafting.
Moreover, Chidambaram drafted the affidavit without consulting the home secretary or attorney general.
He also claimed that there was no conclusive evidence found establishing the fact that Ishrat was a Let terrorist, but the truth of the matter is the CBI had not made any such conclusions.
On June 15 2004, four terrorists - Amjad Ali Rana, Ishrat Jahan Raza, Javed Ghulam Sheikh and Zeeshan Johar - were killed in an encounter by Gujarat police.
The police carried out the operation after the IB was tipped off by Jammu and Kashmir police about these LeT operatives, who were in the city to assassinate Narendra Modi - he was then Gujrat chief minister.
Two contradictory affidavit were filed on Ishrat in 2009, but former Home Secretary of India GK Pillai and former MHA Under Secretary RVS Mani's statements, a Pakistani-American terrorist David Headley’s affirmation and former IB Special Director Rajinder Kumar's allegation had pushed Chidambaram into a cavernous hole.
Mani, in March 2016, had revealed that Chidambaram forced him to file the second affidavit in the Ishrat Jahan case which did not name her as a terrorist.
He alleged that he was tortured by the then IPS officer Satish Verma to file the amended affidavit since he was reluctant to do so. He said he was burnt with cigarettes by SIT personnel and thrashed another person in front of him to break him down psychologically.
Headley, on February 11 2016, had claimed that Ishrat was a suicide bomber of LeT.
Kumar, in February 2016, had revealed that he was offered allurements to give false evidence for implicating Modi, in Ishrat case. He alleged that a senior Congress leader from Gujrat was giving instructions to some disgruntled police officers with an aim to somehow prove that the affidavit of MHA is proven wrong.
Another list of lies: In September this year, Chidambaram had claimed that he had never met Indrani Mukherjea, co-founder of INX Media group and key witness in the corruption case.
Solicitor General Mehta had told the Delhi High Court that Chidambaram had met Indrani and the probe had revealed that the visitors register at the offive of the then finance minister was destroyed due to "lapse of time" by 2017 when the FIR was registered.
Chidambaram could well be facing yet another probe of his role in NSE co-location scam. He is suspected of misusing his office to manipulate the stock market, helping select brokers to profit illegally, and in turn profiteering himself.
Probably, the next list of lies could well be on its way when the investigating agencies start a probe in the matter.
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