mumbai will the supreme court order transferring 48 scam casesincluding 23 in maharashtrato the cbi stop the special investigation team sit probing the multicrore fake stamppaper scam in its other tasks thats the question the legal community is askinglawyers say that sit cannot just wind up and go awayit has other equally important and unfinished tasks at hand the bombay high court on september 4 2003 while appointing retired director general s s puri as the chief of sit had entrusted him with the job of not only probing the scam cases but also probing and reporting on the culpability of highranking police officers and officers of private companies and public sector undertakingsmajeed memon counsel for social activist anna hazare on whose public interest litigation the directions were passed said he planned to ask the high court for a clarification on the issue at the next hearing on march 24 but other lawyers said that a suitable application for modification of orders might have to be made to the apex court itselfit may be recalled that it was the bombay high court that specifically directed mr puri to file a report last year on the culpability of the then mumbai police chief rs sharma it was such a probe that eventually led to his arrestwhile the supreme court had directed the states to provide all possible help to the cbi for the scam probe it had also said that sit officers should also be at the cbis disposal this means that the cbi will take over from where sit has left said senior advocate pr vakilmr vakil however noted that the cbi was not bound by the evidence gathered by the sit so far and was free to take its own decisions before filing the charge sheetfor instance the cbi is free to decide that there was not enough evidence to warrant the arrest of a particular accused or it could even seek arrests of individuals left untouched by the sit so far he saidthough the cbi will be handling 23 of the 101 scam cases in maharashtra lawyers said the remaining would not be investigated by sit any more the remaining 78 cases including those registered inmumbai pune and nashikwill be handed over for further investigations to the local police or the state cid sources statedafter sit hands over the case papers transcripts audio tapes and investigation papers to cbi the latter will file a fresh fir in the maharashtra casessince the 23 cases are the ones under the maharashtra control of organised crime act mcoca the state government will have to issue a notification to the cbi to allow it to investigate under this act