“Filing Defamation”: Maharashtra Home Minister On Sacked Cop’s Letter accusing him of Rs 100 cr every month
The letter alleges Mr Deshmukh had set a target to many officers of collecting ₹ 100 crore every month from restaurants, bars and pubs.
Mumbai:
Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh on Saturday said he will file a defamation case against former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh, who has levelled explosive allegations of corruption and interference in police work against the minister. “All the allegations made by Parambir Singh are false, he should prove them. I’m filing a defamation case against him,” Mr Deshmukh said in a statement.
Mr Singh, in a letter to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, said Mr Deshmukh had been using police officers – including Sachin Waze who has been arrested in the Mukesh Ambani bomb scare case – to extort money from restaurants, pubs, bars and hookah parlours in the city. He alleged that the minister had set a target of ₹ 100 crore per month for the officers in February.
The letter came days after the senior Indian Police Officer was transferred to Home Guards.
Mr Deshmukh, in an interview to a Marathi daily this week, said Mr Singh had been transferred because of “unforgivable” lapses revealed in the Mukesh Ambani security scare probe.
“The former Commissioner of Police, Parambir Singh has made false allegations in order to save himself as the involvement of Sachin Waze in Mukesh Ambani and Mansukh Hiren’s case is becoming clearer from the investigation carried out so far and threads are leading to Mr Singh as well,” Mr Deshmukh tweeted on Saturday.
Mr Singh also said that the Home Minister had on several occasions instructed police officers on how to handle cases and file charges, often summoning them to his home to “bypass” him and other seniors.
Sachin Waze has been arrested by National Investigation Agency over his alleged role in planting an explosives-laden SUV near Mukesh Ambani’s residence in Mumbai last month.
The SUV belonged to a Thane-based businessman Mansukh Hiren, who had filed a stolen report days before the SUV had been recovered from near Mr Ambani’s house.
Mr Hiren was found dead at a creek near Mumbai on March 5. His wife has alleged that the car had been used by Sachin Waze for several months before he returned it in February. She has blamed him for her husband’s death.
Mr Deshmukh on Saturday said Mr Singh’s allegations were part of a conspiracy to malign the Shiv Sena-led state government.
“It’s been a while since Sachin Waze was arrested, why was Mr. Parambir Singh silent about these allegations for so many days?” he said in his statement.
“If Singh is claiming that Sachin Waze gave him all this information in January then why didn’t he bring this information forward back then? … Mr Singh has created this conspiracy to deflect the attention from the explosives case and Mansukh Hiren’s death,” the minister alleged.
