NEW DELHI, Apr 6: Within 24 hours of the Bombay High Court ordering the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe into the allegations of extortions by the Maharashtra home minister leading to resignation by Anil Deshmukh, the state government on Tuesday moved the Supreme Court challenging the order.
Senior leader Dillip Walse Patil, also of the Nationalist Congress Party, on Tuesday took over as the home minister in place of his party colleague Deshmukh.
The Bombay High Court ordered the preliminary probe on Monday on an allegation leveled by the former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh who accused Deshmukh of running an extortion racket with the help of the police to collect Rs 100 crores per month from restaurants, bars and other sources by intimidating them.
Terming the case as “extraordinary and unprecedented,” the High Court had asked the CBI to complete the probe within 15 days, after which the CBI director will be at liberty to take further course of action if prima facie some truth was established into the allegations.
Three days after he was removed as Mumbai Police Commissioner and posted to the Home Guards, Singh wrote an eight-page letter to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, alleging that Deshmukh asked how suspended and arrested assistant police inspector Sachin Vaze to collect Rs 100 crore every month, including Rs 40-50 crore from 1,750 bars and restaurants in Mumbai.
The HC passed the ruling on criminal PIL by Singh seeking a CBI probe against Deshmukh. Following the High Court’s order, Deshmukh resigned on Monday on “moral grounds.”
Deshmukh is the second minister in the MVA government to resign under a cloud, Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Rathod having resigned as Forest Minister on February 28 after he was linked to the death of a 22-year-old woman in Pune.
(Manas Dasgupta)
