New Delhi, March 12: Nearly three months after it directed the CBI to re-investigate the alleged role of Congress leader Jagdish Tytler in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case, a city court today slammed the probe agency for its failure to submit a status report on the probe.

"The attitude of the CBI is very strange...They should bring the guilty to book and not shield them," Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjiv Jain said.

Even as the CBI counsel submitted that they would now comply with the orders to file the status report, the court expressed its anger saying "Why not today?"

The court which ordered re-investigation of the case on December 18 last year, had asked the CBI to file its report under section 173 CrPC (investigation report), after a US-based witness Jasbir Singh volunteered to depose against Tytler for allegedly inciting a mob against the Sikhs.

"I had not asked you to file a chargesheet, but a status report. It was your duty to file the status report," the judge said in an apparently disgusted tone. The agency has now been directed to file the report within a week.

In his arguments, CBI counsel Sanjay Kumar submitted that a petition on issues related to Singh's testimony was pending before the Delhi High Court and sought time to file its report on the ground that the matter was sub-judice before the higher court.

The arguments of the agency, however, were countered by Singh's counsel Sharad Kapoor and senior counsel H S Phoolka who argued that unless the matter was stayed by the High Court, the CBI could not seek exemption. Asked about the progress in the probe, the investigation officer of the case informed the court that the CBI had examined four witnesses so far.

Interestingly, both the CBI and the petitioner failed to produce before the court the High Court's order on the petition challenging the agency's claim to seek Singh's presence in India.

Expressing surprise over the CBI's failure to place before it the status report as well as the High Court orders on the matter, the judge said, "I think you are taking the case lightly."

The matter has now been posted for April nine.

Singh had earlier expressed his inability to come to the country and had expressed his willingness to record his statement through video-conferencing.

The case relates to an incident on November 1, 1984 when a mob had set afire Gurudwara Pulbangash killing three persons.

The CBI had on September 29 sought to close the case against former Union Minister Tytler, declaring Singh, an alleged key witness and presently settled in California, as untraced.

Singh had told the Nanavati Commission on August 31, 2000 that "he had overheard Tytler rebuking his men on the night of November 3, 1984 ... For nominal killing of Sikhs in his constituency."