Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh on Thursday said he has written to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, asking him to inquire into the corruption allegations levelled against him by former Mumbai police chief Param Bir Singh.
“I had asked the chief minister to inquire into the allegations made against me by Param Bir Singh to bring out the truth,” he tweeted along with a copy of the letter. “If the chief minister orders an inquiry, I will welcome it.”
Singh had moved the Supreme Court seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry into the corruption allegations. The court, however, directed the former Mumbai police chief to approach the Bombay High Court first.
On March 20, Singh had accused Deshmukh of extorting money from bars, restaurants and hookah parlours in the city. In a letter to Thackeray, the former police chief wrote that suspended Crime Branch officer Sachin Vaze told him that the minister had asked him to collect Rs 100 crore every month through illegal channels.
Singh had also accused the home minister of frequently interfering with police investigation in various cases.
Vaze was sent to the custody of the National Investigation Agency on March 15 for his alleged role in placing an explosives-laden vehicle outside the south Mumbai residence of industrialist Mukesh Ambani last month. Two days later, Singh – who was handling the investigation – was transferred from his position to the low-key Home Guard department by the state government.
The allegations have landed the Shiv Sena, the Congress, and the Nationalist Congress Party government in a huge controversy. Bharatiya Janata Party leaders have claimed there was a possibility that such incidents of alleged extortion were taking place in other Maharashtra cities like Pune, Nagpur and Jalgaon.
Deshmukh had rubbished the allegations levelled against him by Singh, alleging that the police officer was trying to cover up after mishandling the Ambani case. After initially calling the charges against Deshmukh “serious”, Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar had dismissed them on Monday. Pawar claimed that Deshmukh was hospitalised after testing positive for the coronavirus during the period that Singh mentioned in his accusations.
Former Maharashtra Chief Minister and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday accused the NCP of covering its tracks to protect the state government, and alleged that Pawar was made to falsely testify about Deshmukh’s whereabouts.
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