The Mumbai Police on Sunday rejected Aam Aadmi Party's claim that Bharatiya Janata Party minister Eknath Khadse had received calls from underworld don Dawood Ibrahim’s Pakistan home, reported PTI. “Our initial analysis of the cell phone number [belonging to Khadse] indicated that there were neither outgoing nor incoming calls from this number to that of the fugitive (Dawood) during the entire period of September, 2015 to April, 2016, as stated in the [AAP] press conference,” Mumbai joint commissioner of police (crime) Atulchandra Kulkarni said
This came a day after AAP alleged that Bharatiya Janata Party minister Eknath Khadse had received calls from underworld don Dawood Ibrahim’s Pakistan home, and demanded his immediate resignation. The BJP, however, claimed the allegations were baseless, saying the phone number AAP had attributed to Khadse had not been in use for more than a year, PTI reported.
However, AAP member Preeti Sharma Menon, at a press conference in Mumbai, claimed the number was active till last month. Menon said there were several calls from Ibrahim’s wife Mehjabeen Shaikh’s number on Khadse’s phone between September 4, 2015, and April 5, 2016. She added that she had raised the issue with Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, and he had agreed to an investigation into the matter. However, there has been no official confirmation of this yet.
The allegations were made based on data from a Pakistan telecom company that an “ethical hacker” Manish Bhangale unearthed. Khadse is the senior-most member of Fadnavis’ Cabinet. His office issued a statement saying, “I suspect that my SIM card must have been cloned by those who made these alleged calls. But I am confident that the truth will come out at the end of an inquiry."
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