Rakesh Maria Transfer: Abrupt and questionable 

The transfer of Mumbai Police Chief Rakesh Maria could have been handled better. The Maharashtra Government might have had very good reasons to move him out from the high-profile post, especially when the Maria-led investigations in the Indrani Mukherjee case had become an embarrassing media circus, but this was no way to effect the change. Maria was seduced by the television cameras, thus taking a lot away from the painstakingly slow investigations into the murder of a young girl allegedly by her own mother, but moving him out even before the investigations could be sewed up, was wrong. That his tenure as Mumbai Police Chief was to end on September 30 and by then the Ganesh festival would have been in full flow seems to be a weak excuse. There was clearly something that does not meet the eye in the abrupt removal of Maria and his posting as the Director General of Police, Home Guards, a backwaters assignment much loathed by ambitious police officers. Speculation that Maria touched a raw nerve in some high corporate quarters while exploring the money-laundering angle of the Mukherjea couple needs to be squashed. Clarity is needed on the real reasons behind Maria’s removal.