What Maria probed is under Javed’s scanner

What Maria probed is under Javed’s scanner

Joydeep R. RayUpdated: Friday, May 31, 2019, 10:28 PM IST
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Mumbai : The Sheena Bora murder probe has now taken a new twist. The probe earlier carried out by former police commissioner Rakesh Maria, now Director General of Police (DGP) Home Guards, during last one week has been reinvestigated by Maria’s successor Ahmed Javed. A highly confidential status report prepared by Javed was handed over to state DGP Sanjeev Dayal late on Monday.

Dayal has intimated state Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis about receipt of the report on Tuesday when both of them were in Nagpur to attend a function along with Additional Chief Secretary (Home), Kalyaneshwar P Bakshi. The said report prepared by the new top cop of Mumbai mentions certain vital information on the procedure earlier adopted by the probe team, critical analysis of investigation done so far by the Khar police team under the leadership of Maria and also the areas where the probe lacks in.

A top state Home Department officer said the same will now be ‘critically analysed’ by Dayal and then will be discussed with the Chief Minister, also the full-time Home Minister of Maharashtra. Once the Home Department receives the final status report from Dayal, fate of Maria will be decided. Interestingly, Maria and Javed are not on best of terms since 2014 when Maria was assigned the tough task of city’s top cop superseding Javed, contender for the same post and also senior than Maria.

Talking to Free Press Journal from Nagpur, Bakshi, at the helm of affairs of state Home Department said, “Once the DGP comes back from Nagpur, he will go through the report submitted by Javed and also furnish a separate report prepared by him to the state Home Department which is headed by the Chief Minister.

From there, the state government will take it up and decide on the further course of action in the murder probe.”

Admitting that Dayal has received the status report from Javed on Monday, Bakshi also said, “The report should ideally have mentioned the vital factors including whether the probe carried out earlier is enough to file a chargesheet, factors which are yet to be probed and reasons for not probing those earlier, whether enough material evidence has been collected by the team headed by Maria, what are the other evidence to be secured for a fair trial and prosecution and also if anyone else needs to be probed.”

If further probe is not needed in this case, the million-dollar question on whether Maria will continue to investigate or not, will certainly die down. State Home Department sources said, the former top cop is yet to get the official letter from his parent department asking him to continue investigation.

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: Has the state Home Department smelt any foul play in the probe that it asked for a status report from Maria’s successor? Are there vital questions which have remained unanswered in Maria’s investigation? Has there been something wrong in the direction of probe chosen by Maria’s core team? Was Maria trying to shield someone? Or all’s well with the previous team? These questions definitely will now have proper responses as none other than city’s Commissioner of Police has filed a report on the probe carried out earlier. Irony it is that Maria’s destiny as far as Sheena Bora murder case is concerned, will be decided by none other than the man who took over from him. Repeated attempts made by this newspaper to reach Javed and Maria did not yield any response from them.

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