Mumbai: Sachin Vaze 'unconditionally' withdraws plea in HC, challenging two orders of Chandiwal Commission

Former cop Sachin Vaze has unconditionally withdrawn his plea from the Bombay High Court challenging two orders of the Chandiwal Commission dismissing his applications.

On Wednesday, Vaze’s counsel informed the division bench of justices Gautam Patel and Madhav Jamdar that he wanted to withdraw the plea unconditionally.

The HC, on Tuesday, had expressed it was inclined to dismiss Vaze’s petition and granted him time till Wednesday to inform whether he was withdrawing the same.

Vaze had challenged the “legality, validity and propriety” of orders dated January 24 and February 9 by the Chandiwal Commission and sought to quash the same.

Vaze’s application to summon the then joint commissioner of police (Crime) Bharambe for examination before the Commission as his letter and report were purportedly “prejudicial to his interest” was dismissed by the one-member commission.

On February 9, Vaze had made an application seeking to retract his statement with regard to former home minister Anil Deshmukh. Vaze initially said that neither Deshmukh nor his associates or people related to him have ever made any monetary demand nor instructed him to extort Rs 100 crore from city's bar owners.

However, a month later he sought to retract this statement which was not allowed by the Commission.

According to Vaze’s plea before the HC, along with his application for retraction of his statement, he had filed an affidavit before the Commission stating that he was under “immense and tremendous pressure due to his arrest” by the Mumbai crime branch.

He has alleged, in the affidavit, that he was “mentally harassed and victimised so as to affect his psyche and his state of mind”. He has further claimed that he was “subjected to severe mental torture and harassment apparently by Deshmukh and it continued even after his resignation”, he had claimed in the affidavit.

“Consequently, when the petitioner was put certain questions at the time of his cross examination before the Hon’ble One Member High Level Committee, the petitioner gave incorrect answers,” his plea read.

However, he had not submitted this affidavit before the HC, which did not go down well with the HC. Hence, he was either asked to withdraw the plea or face dismissal of the same.