Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday withdrew the general consent granted to the Central Bureau of Investigation to conduct inquiries in the state, Live Law reported.
The agency will now have to ask for the state government’s permission to initiate inquiries on a case by case basis. Rajasthan withdrew consent earlier this year, while West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh revoked it in 2019.
The move came a day after the CBI filed a case to investigate allegations of manipulation of Television Rating Points by three channels. The Mumbai Police is also looking into the alleged rigging of ratings by Republic TV, Box Cinema and Marathi channel Fakt Marathi. The CBI registered the case after a complaint was filed in Uttar Pradesh in connection with the scam. The inquiry was recommended by the Adityanath-led government.
The Maharashtra government had interpreted the move as an attempt by the Bharatiya Janata Party government in UP to interfere in the investigation against Republic TV, according to the Hindustan Times.
The CBI had also taken over the investigation of actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death in August. Unidentified officials told Hindustan Times that the Maharashtra government’s order will not affect this investigation. Earlier this month, the CBI had dismissed reports that its inquiry into the actor’s death was complete.
Rajput was found dead in his apartment in Bandra on June 14, in what the Mumbai Police said was a case of suicide. The CBI had taken over the inquiry from the Bihar Police in an abetment to suicide case filed by the actor’s father KK Singh in Patna against actor Rhea Chakraborty and her family.
On October 7, Rajput’s family wrote to the CBI, lodging their strong protest against the findings of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, which had concluded that the actor was not murdered. The family, through its lawyer Vikas Singh, asked the investigative agency to form a fresh medical board to once again review the “dubious” autopsy reports.
In a medico-legal opinion submitted to the CBI earlier this month, the six-member team of forensic doctors dismissed allegations of “poisoning and strangling” and confirmed that Rajput’s death was “a case of hanging and death by suicide”.
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