- Friday, April 26, 2024
By: Pramod Thomas
A senior Mumbai police officer filed a complaint in the Supreme Court on Monday (22) accusing a state government minister of corruption, the latest development in a bizarre case that has transfixed the media for weeks.
Param Bir Singh, the former head of police in Mumbai, filed a petition seeking an ‘unbiased, uninfluenced, impartial and fair investigation’ into corruption allegations against Anil Deshmukh, home minister of Maharashtra state that is home to the city.
Deshmukh has denied impropriety.
With claims of graft, a suspicious death and a bomb threat against India’s richest man, the case has the hallmarks of a thriller made by the country’s Bollywood film industry, dominating TV networks and newspaper front pages and trending on social media for almost a month.
On February 25, a car laden with explosives was found near the Mumbai home of Mukesh Ambani, who heads Reliance Industries and is India’s richest man.
A man was seen getting out of the vehicle and into a white SUV that was later found in a garage belonging to the Mumbai crime branch.
The purported owner of the vehicle was later found dead, with police treating his death as suspicious.
Sachin Vaze, a senior Mumbai police officer, was arrested on March 13 by India’s federal National Investigation Agency (NIA) in connection with the bomb threat. He denies wrongdoing.
In a statement, Reliance said it was confident police in Mumbai ‘will complete their thorough investigation quickly’.
Last week, Singh was transferred from his role as Mumbai’s police commissioner for his handling of the case.
In Monday’s petition, Singh said his transfer was illegal, and that Deshmukh interfered in police investigations and worked with Vaze and other officers to extort money from local businesses.
Deshmukh denied the allegations, saying that purported meetings with Vaze last month were impossible as he was in hospital with Covid-19 and then in quarantine.
The case is an additional headache for the opposition-led government in Maharashtra that is already battling a surge in Covid-19 cases.
India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has repeatedly called for the resignation of chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, who turned against the BJP after a power-sharing agreement collapsed.
