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Maharashtra’s political turmoil took a new twist on Tuesday, with the senior BJP leader, Devendra Fadnavis, disclosing in a press conference that the Commissioner of Intelligence, Maharashtra Police, had exposed a racket of transfers of senior police officers in August 2020. The matter was brought to the notice of the Chief Minister and State Home Minister. However, no action was taken on the subject.
Fadnavis said that he had a copy of the report with him, including 6.3 GB data intercepts. The conversations of police officers were intercepted by taking permission of the State Home Secretary. The call recording has a lot of sensitive information about senior police officers and politicians. Therefore, by evening, he would be submitting the report to the Union Home Secretary, seeking CBI investigation into the matter.
The report was prepared on this development on August 25, 2020. Chief Minister, Uddhav Thackeray was fully briefed on the matter, and the report was sent to the Home Minister, Anil Deshmukh. But the only action taken was shunting out of Commissioner of Intelligence Rashmi Shukla to an inconsequential post, he said.
Fadnavis also rubbished Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) supremo, Sharad Pawar’s claim that State Home Minister Anil Deshmukh was home quarantined in Nagpur after his Covid infection in February. He shared a flight manifest of February 15, which claims that Deshmukh had travelled from Nagpur to Mumbai in a private jet.
He also said that he also had two documents of the Maharashtra Police Department, which shows VIP’s public movement in Mumbai. The document of February 17 shows that Deshmukh was to travelled to the Sahayadri Guest House at 3 pm. Another document of February 24 shows that at 11 am he was to travel from his home to the State Secretariat.
Extortion case
The present political crisis has been triggered by a letter of IPS officer Parambir Singh, who was the Mumbai Police Commissioner until recently. On Saturday, Singh had written a letter to Thackeray alleging that State Home Minister Anil Deshmukh was indulging in corruption and had asked suspended Assistant Police Inspector Sachin Waze to collect ₹100 crore every month through extortion.
The Congress party in Maharashtra has also taken a serious view of these happenings. At the time of going to press, senior party members were still holding a close-door meeting on the matter.
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