HC quashes two illegal phone-tapping cases against IPS officer Rashmi Shukla

Bombay HC strikes down illegal phone tapping cases against IPS officer Rashmi Shukla; state govt refuses sanction to prosecute her.

The Bombay high court Friday struck down two illegal phone tapping cases registered against senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Rashmi Shukla, a top contender for the post of the director general of police.

Pune, India - June 23, 2017:Rashmi Shukla, Commissioner of Police, Pune City posses for photo at her office in Pune, India, on Friday, June 23, 2017. (Photo by Pratham Gokhale/ Hindustan Times) (Pratham Gokhale/HT PHOTO)

In the first FIR registered in Mumbai, she was booked for illegally tapping phones of Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut and Nationalist Congress Party leader Eknath Khadse while in the second one registered in Pune, she was accused of illegally tapping phones of Congress leader Nana Patole.

A division bench of justice AS Gadkari and justice Sharmila Deshmukh passed an order after advocate general Birendra Saraf said that the state government had refused sanction to prosecute Shukla, as required under section 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Saraf also said that the Pune police had already filed a closure report before a court in January this year and no protest petition had been filed by the complainant.

The court was hearing two petitions filed by Shukla for quashing the two cases, on the grounds that there was considerable delay in registering the FIRs and though several other police personnel were involved in the process of obtaining permissions for tapping and conducting the surveillance, she was singled out and the FIRs were registered only against her. In both cases, the high court had granted her protection from coercive action.

On March 2, 2021, a case was registered at Colaba police station based on a complaint filed by the then additional commissioner of police (special branch) Rajiv Jain. According to the complainant, she illegally tapped the mobile phones of Raut and Khadse when she was heading the State Intelligence Department (SID).

The second FIR was registered in Pune in February 2022 for allegedly misusing her position as the then commissioner of police, Pune, to illegally tap the phone calls of Patole. Shukla had allegedly claimed that the mobile numbers belonged to a man dealing in narcotics.

Shukla, who is presently on Central deputation, faced yet another criminal case registered by the Mumbai cyber police on March 26, 2021, based on a complaint filed by an assistant commissioner at SID. The allegations were that she leaked a classified report that she had prepared in 2020 when she was the SID commissioner. The report contained details of some private individuals who acted as middlemen for facilitating transfers and securing desired postings for senior police officers in exchange for money, using their political connections.

At a press conference on March 23, 2021, the then leader of opposition Devendra Fadnavis claimed that the state did not act on her report and therefore, he was going to hand over documents, including a pen drive containing Shukla’s report, to the union ministry of home affairs.

On August 21, the metropolitan magistrate court closed the case after the Central Bureau of Investigation failed to establish “from where, by whom and when the documents in question were handed over to Fadnavis”.