The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) examined Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey on Friday, in connection with its probe against the former Maharashtra home minister, Anil Deshmukh, in a corruption case.
“Pandey was questioned for nearly six hours over the allegations of attempting to influence former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh to withdraw his complaint against Deshmukh while the Bombay high court was hearing the case,” said a CBI officer.
Pandey did not respond to calls and messages from this correspondent on Saturday.
In April last year, Singh had written to the CBI alleging that a ‘malicious attempt’ and ‘conspiracy to thwart the preliminary enquiry of CBI and attempt to tamper witness’ was being made by the then acting DGP, Sanjay Pandey. Pandey was conducting inquiries against Singh on the direction of the state government.
In his letter, Singh had also attached transcripts of conversations that he had with Pandey via WhatsApp calls recorded without Pandey’s knowledge, in which the latter allegedly offered to resolve the issue between Singh and the Maharashtra government amicably, after Singh wrote to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, raising charges of extortion against Deshmukh in March last year.
Later, Pandey immediately recused himself from the enquiry he was conducting against Singh.
Earlier this month, a CBI team had questioned Deshmukh inside Arthur Road Jail, in connection with the corruption case registered by the agency against him. A special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court had allowed the CBI to question Deshmukh, lodged in Arthur Road Jail, between March 3 and March 5, in presence of a jail officer.
The CBI move to question Deshmukh came after its searches in Nagpur and Mumbai at the premises of people linked with Deshmukh, including chartered accountants, last month.
In October last year, the CBI had arrested a Thane resident, Santosh Jagtap, in the corruption case. A non-bailable warrant (NBW) was also issued against him by the court. In August, a CBI team had conducted searches at Jagtap’s premises and had also seized Rs 9 lakh. The investigation had indicated that Jagtap played the role of a middleman in the transfer and postings of officers.
On April 21 last year, the CBI had registered a corruption case against Deshmukh and others under the IPC sections related to criminal conspiracy and section of the Prevention of Corruption Act for “attempt to obtain undue advantage for improper and dishonest performance of public duty”.
In a letter written to the chief minister and others on March 20 last year, Singh had alleged that Deshmukh had instructed some Mumbai police officers, including dismissed Assistant Inspector Sachin Vaze, to collect an amount of Rs 100 crore every month from bar owners in the city.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED), which had later registered a money-laundering case based on the CBI’s FIR, had claimed that on Deshmukh’s instructions, Vaze had called a meeting of some orchestra bar owners and demanded Rs 3 lakh from each of them.
The ED had also claimed in its charge sheet against Deshmukh’s staffers Sanjeev Palande and Kundan Shinde, that Vaze had collected Rs 4.7 crore from orchestra bar owners between December 2020 and February 2021 and had handed over the extorted money to Shinde in two instalments.
