A Mumbai court on Saturday rejected a plea filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation seeking to extend former Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh’s custody with the probe agency in connection to an alleged corruption case, Bar and Bench reported.
However, the court remanded Deshmukh to judicial custody till April 29.
The case is related to accusations made by former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh who had written to Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray in March last year alleging that Deshmukh had asked some officers to extort Rs 100 crore every month from bars and restaurants in the city.
The Enforcement Directorate has also filed a money laundering case against him on allegations that he had diverted these funds to his personal accounts through illegal channels.
Deshmukh, a senior leader of the Nationalist Congress Party, has denied the accusations, but he resigned from the Maharashtra Cabinet in April last year after the Bombay High Court directed the Central Bureau of Investigation to conduct a preliminary inquiry against him.
On November 2, the Enforcement Directorate had arrested him and was sent to judicial custody. On April 6, the CBI took over his custody to investigate the matter. He was initially sent to CBI custody till April 11, and the detention was later extended till Saturday. The CBI had requested the court to extend the custody by three more days.
However, Special Judge DP Shingade held that the grounds for further custody were “not good and satisfactory”, Live Law reported.
Along with Deshmukh, the judge also remanded his personal assistant Kunadan Shinde, his secretary Sanjeev Palande and dismissed Mumbai police officer Sachin Waze to judicial custody till April 29.
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