NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday forced amicus curiae Shyam Divan to withdraw his application seeking court monitoring of CBI’s probe into the Rs 500 crore Odisha chit fund scam by advising him that he was to supposed to assist the court and not remotely appear to advance the petitioner’s cause.

Divan had moved the SC alleging that the Naveen Patnaik government appeared to have stifled the court-ordered CBI probe to protect influential politicians.

“Although more than five months have passed since the court order directing CBI probe, media reports indicate that the CBI has proceeded with investigations into the affairs of Seashore group, Artha Tatwa, Greenray International and Nabadiganta Capital Services. Little or no progress appears to have been made in respect of 40 entities,” he said.

A bench of Justices T S Thakur and Adarsh K Goel said, “You are our amicus curiae. Can you take a stand on behalf of the petitioner (Alok Jena)? Whenever the CBI faces difficulty in investigations, it can come directly to us. How do you know the CBI is facing difficulty? Are you keeping a watch on them?”

Divan explained that Jena had given him some documents on this issue and he had moved the application after applying his mind to it.

But the bench said, “Amicus curiae should stay independent. If the petitioner has some grievance, let him file an application. This is such a big scam. We do not know the angles. If the petitioner or any person other than the amicus curiae points them out, we can take a call on it.”

In his application, Divan had quoted Jena, who claimed after interacting with CBI officers in Bhubaneswar that more than 10 influential politicians, including elected representatives belonging to different political parties and some in the council of ministers headed by Patnaik, were refusing to cooperate with the probe.

The CBI recently arrested BJD MP Ramachandra Hansda, former BJD MLA Subarna Naik and former BJP MLA Hitesh Kumar Bagrati on charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating and diversion of funds while they were directors of chit fund company Nabadiganta Capital Services. The agency had last week arrested BJD MLA Pravat Tirpathy for his alleged links with Artha Tatwa group.