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No relief for ex-Mumbai top cop Param Bir Singh from Supreme Court
The CBI is currently probing the corruption charges Singh levelled against former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh in a letter to Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray in March this year.
The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh’s plea to shift all cases against him to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) or to any other state. He alleged that the police force was prejudiced against him after he claimed that former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh was involved in corruption.
The CBI is currently probing the corruption charges Singh levelled against Deshmukh in a letter to Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray in March this year.
Questioning his lack of faith in the police force, the court asked Singh, “You are part of Maharashtra cadre IPS [and have] served the state for 30 years. It is a shocking allegation that you have no faith in your force.”
Singh, who was represented by senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, told the court that Singh had filed a complaint dated March 20, 2021, accusing Deshmukh of running a “money collection scheme” through the police department. Following this, he was transferred to a low-key post in Mumbai Police’s Home Guards and department enquiry was initiated against him. Jethmalani said that the officer in charge of the case lodged against him had pressurised him to withdraw the complaint against Deshmukh and threatened him with several criminal cases.
The court wondered that if a DGP-rank officer could succumb to pressure, what would happen to others on the force.
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Referring to one of the complaints against Singh, Jethmalani told the court that the complainant was involved in five criminal cases, and had now “chosen to turn the gun against the former top cop”. The bench of justices Hemant Gupta and V Ramasubramanian said, “It is said persons who live in glass house should not throw stones at others.”
Singh also asked the court to put a blanket stay on any further FIRs against him. The court said that it could not grant such a prayer as it was the magistrate’s duty to do so. Moreover, the court said it would examine the credibility of the complainant, but the background of the accused could not be grounds to stop proceedings initiated by him.
The court reminded Singh that he is already pursuing identical petitions with overlapping prayers before the Bombay high court. Singh’s counsel agreed to withdraw the petition as the court dismissed his claim of being pressurised as a “make-believe story”. Singh had reported to CBI on April 19 that he was being pressurised to withdraw his complaint and annexed the transcript of his conversation with the said officer as evidence.
Singh had approached the Supreme Court in March this year for an independent probe to expose Deshmukh’s alleged malpractices “before evidence was destroyed”. The top court refused to entertain the plea on March 25 and asked Singh to approach the Bombay high court. The CBI is probing Singh’s complaint against Deshmukh of running an alleged extortion racket. The final report is yet to be filed by CBI.
Singh was transferred to Home Guards earlier this year after he allegedly mishandled a case wherein explosives were found in an abandoned vehicle outside billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Antilia residence. Sachin Vaze, now a former police officer, was suspended in the case.
