2018: A year when India's top institutions were under fire

Cat among Parrots - Central Bureau of Investigation

The reputation of India's top investigation agency hit rock bottom with its two seniormost officers trading charges of favouritism and corruption.

Bird and animal metaphors are inescapable when it comes to the country's apex investigation agency, whose motto is industry, impartiality and integrity'. All three qualities have been called into question in recent years even as successive governments have used the sensitive agency to further their political ends, mainly fixing political rivals or obliging others by withdrawing cases.

In 2013, angered over political interference in its functioning, the Supreme Court called the CBI a caged parrot, speaking in its master's voice'. This harsh metaphor did not stop the agency's slow descent into an abyss of infamy. Since 2013, two former CBI chiefs have been named in corruption cases, but the worst