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Former Maha home minister in ED custody
A Mumbai court on Tuesday remanded former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh to the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) custody till November 6, a day after the central agency arrested the 72-year-old Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader in connection with a money-laundering case
A Mumbai court on Tuesday remanded former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh to the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) custody till November 6, a day after the central agency arrested the 72-year-old Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader in connection with a money-laundering case.
Deshmukh was arrested by ED after about 12 hours of questioning in the case linked to an alleged extortion racket in the state police establishment. The NCP, part of Maharashtra’s ruling coalition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), has said the allegations are politically motivated.
A First Information Report (FIR) was registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against Deshmukh in April to probe allegations that he asked suspended assistant police inspector Sachin Vaze, currently behind bars in relation to the February 25 Antilia bomb scare conspiracy as well as the murder of businessman Mansukh Hiran on March 5, to collect ₹100 crore every month from the hotels, bars and restaurants in Mumbai.
The NCP leader appeared before ED for the first time on Monday after skipping multiple summons for the past five to six months. The central agency even issued a look-out notice against him as he was absconding all these months.
On Tuesday, Deshmukh was produced for remand before additional sessions judge PB Jadhav, who presided over the special holiday court, a little after noon. Additional solicitor general Anil Singh, appearing for ED, sought 14-day custody of the NCP leader, saying his custodial interrogation was required to carry out further probe into the case, which stems from the CBI FIR.
Shortly after conducting a medical examination at Sir JJ Hospital in south Mumbai, ED officials produced Deshmukh before the holiday court. Additional solicitor general Singh and Hiten Venegaonkar, who appeared for the agency, submitted that a comprehensive money trail needs to be established to bring the guilty to book, and, since Deshmukh has emerged as the main beneficiary, he is required to be interrogated in custody. In its application seeking Deshmukh’s remand, the agency said a foreign angle could not be ruled out.
A money laundering case against Deshmukh was registered on May 11 on the basis of CBI’s FIR of April 21. The CBI FIR was, in turn, based on allegations of corruption levelled by former Mumbai Police commissioner Param Bir Singh.
In a letter written to Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on March 20, Singh alleged that Deshmukh directed certain Mumbai police officers to collect an amount of ₹100 crore every month from Mumbai’s bars and restaurants.
ED’s lawyers pointed out that the agency’s probe revealed that, on Deshmukh’s instructions, Vaze called a meeting of bar owners, and that, between December 2020 and February 2021, collected ₹4.7 crore from the owners of so-called orchestra bars in Mumbai to avoid police interference. In his statement to ED, Vaze is said to have revealed that he handed over the “extorted money” in two instalments to Deshmukh’s aide Kundan Shinde.
Subsequently, they said, Deshmukh’s son Hrishikesh received an amount of ₹4.18 crore routed through Delhi-based shell entities as donations to a Deshmukh-led charitable trust, Shri Sai Shikshan Sanstha, Nagpur.
Deshmukh’s counsels, advocates Vikram Chaudhri and Aniket Nikam, maintained that the NCP leader’s arrest was illegal. They pointed out that the original complainant Singh himself fled the country and is wanted in several extortion cases, and Vaze, on whose statement the agency is relying, is under arrest for equally serious offences. They added that Deshmukh was in no way related to the controversy and that the investigation itself was mala fide.
