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Pune court orders fresh probe in illegal phone tapping by IPS officer Rashmi Shukla
While refusing to accept the closure report in connection with the alleged phone tapping of senior IPS officer Rashmi Shukla, the Pune court stated in its order that the probe official did not produce a copy of the CD containing recordings in court
While refusing to accept the closure report in connection with the alleged phone tapping of senior IPS officer Rashmi Shukla, the Pune court stated in its order that the probe official did not produce a copy of the CD containing recordings in court.
Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) Court No 3 Chandrashila Patil in her order stated, “Prima facie after going through the report C final Summary, it appears that the concerned investigating officer has not considered the statement of witnesses recorded under section 164 (5) of Code of Criminal Procedure, which is evidence against the accused.”
“Though the conversations on the above-stated mobiles are stored in one CD, the said CD has not been produced on record. It appears that there are lacunae in the investigation done by the concerned investigating officer,” the order stated.
According to investigating officer, for putting the above-stated mobile numbers under observation, the then Police inspector, technical branch, dy director, Crime Branch, Pune City, additional commissioner of Pune, commissioner of Pune and additional chief secretary, home minister Maharashtra have put their signatures on the said proposal.
IPS Shukla has held key positions including Pune police commissioner and is regarded to be close to Deputy Chief Minister (DCM) Devendra Fadnavis in political and police circles.
In October, the Pune Police filed the closure report in Shukla’s criminal case involving phone tapping.
Amitabh Gupta, the then-Pune police commissioner and now additional director general (Prisons and Correctional Services) stated that the city police had filed a C-summary report with the court and that once the court accepted the report, the case was considered closed.
This C summary final report was filed against the accused for the offence under section 26 of the Telegraph Act and sections 465 (Punishment for forgery), 469 (Whoever commits forgery) and 471 (Whoever fraudulently uses any document or electronic record) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The investigating officer concluded that after scrutiny of the documents and after going through the entire evidence, it transpired that Shukla destroyed the official notes as per the rules 419(A)(18) of the Telegraphs Act.
