CBI files 59-page charge sheet against ex-Maharashtra minister Anil Deshmukh in corruption case

The central investigating agency had registered the corruption case against Deshmukh on April 21, 2021, based on allegations levelled by former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a 59-page charge sheet against Maharashtra's former home minister Anil Deshmukh and his personal assistant Sanjeev Palande and Kundan Shinde in the session court on Thursday in connection with the corruption case.

Anil Deshmukh, Maharashtra's former home minister. (HT FILE PHOTO)

The agency had arrested Deshmukh, Palande and Shinde in April in the ₹100-crore bribery case.

The central investigating agency had registered the corruption case against Deshmukh on April 21, 2021, based on allegations levelled by former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh.

In a letter to Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on March 20, 2021, Singh had alleged that Deshmukh instructed certain Mumbai police officers, including Sachin Waze to collect an amount of ₹100 crore every month from Mumbai’s restaurants and bars.

The charge sheet was filed a day after a special CBI court agreed to let dismissed police officer Sachin Waze become an approver in the corruption case registered against Deshmukh CBI.

Waze had approached the special court last week, seeking permission to turn approver and testify against 72-year-old Deskhmukh, a Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader. The CBI consented to Waze’s request to turn witness for the prosecution “in order to unravel the truth and to prove the role and complicity of other accused persons in commission of offences.”

“If accused Sachin Waze volunteers to make full and true disclosure of the whole circumstances within knowledge about his involvement/role and the involvement of other accused persons in the case, this Hon’ble Court by imposing just and proper conditions, may pass an appropriate order for making him an approver in the interest of justice in accordance with law,” the agency told the court.