‘What did Param Bir Singh, Sachin Vaze discuss for 3 hours before arrest?’: NCP

The confusion comes in the backdrop of a letter by Param Bir Singh to chief minister Uddhav Thackeray alleging Anil Deshmukh met Sachin Vaze in February regarding extortion in Mumbai.

Adding to the war of words between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) over former Mumbai Police commissioner Param Bir Singh’s corruption charges against Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh, minister Nawab Malik on Tuesday questioned why the top cop met Sachin Vaze before his arrest in the Mansukh Hiran death case.

Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik slammed the allegations levelled by BJP's Devendra Fadnavis against state government. (@nawabmalikncp/Twitter Photo )

“What did Singh discuss with Sachin Vaze for three hours before he was arrested in the Hiran case?” Malik asked soon after BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis’s press conference in which the former chief minister further raked up the “discrepancy” in NCPs statements on the matter.

Fadnavis was referring to NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s statements on Monday which implied that Deshmukh was in Nagpur between February 5 and February 27 after he tested Covid-19 positive. However, in a video message earlier in the day the state home minister said he flew to Mumbai for home quarantine from February 15 onwards.

The confusion comes in the backdrop of a letter by Param Bir Singh, who was recently removed from his post, to chief minister Uddhav Thackeray alleging Deshmukh met Vaze in February regarding the extortion of ₹100 crore a month from Mumbai’s restaurants and bars. Vaze has been suspended after his arrest.

On Deshmukh’s February meeting with Vaze as claimed by Singh, Fadnavis produced police records of the minister’s movement when he was reportedly under home quarantine. “Sharad Pawar saheb yesterday said that Deshmukh was home quarantined from February 15 till the end of the month. But the police records show that he attended meetings at Sahyadri guest house on February 17 and 24. Pawar saheb has been given wrong information and thus, his attempts to shield Deshmukh have failed,” he said.

Fadnavis also claimed that Thackeray overlooked a “very sensitive and explosive” report regarding the alleged corruption in transfers of Indian Police Service (IPS) officers submitted by the director general of police (DGP). He told reporters that the then commissioner of intelligence, Rashmi Shukla, reportedly intercepted some phone calls pertaining to police transfers and submitted a report to then DGP Subodh Jaiswal who subsequently sent it to the state government on August 25, 2020.

Following this, Malik alleged that Shukla was illegally tapping the phones of certain people and said that 80% of police officers mentioned in her report were not transferred. He asserted that police transfers are done as per recommendations of DGP and a police establishment board.

The minister accused Fadnavis and BJP of trying “other methods to pull down the Maha Vikas Aghadi government since they failed to lure our MLAs.”