Former city police commissioner Sanjay Pandey’s favourite officer Sanjay Mohite, who handled some high-profile cases like the ones against IPS officer Rashmi Shukla and the independent MP Mohan Delkar suicide case, has been shunted out of Colaba police station.
Police inspector Mohite has now been posted to the Economic Offences Wing of Mumbai police. Though his transfer order was issued six months ago, and since then, he had been requesting to be allowed to join his new posting, he was relieved on Wednesday.
Pandey is currently in judicial custody in the National Stock Exchange phone-tapping case.
Police officials said Mohite had in April filed a 700-page chargesheet against Shukla in connection with the illegal phone-tapping of Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut and Nationalist Congress Party leader Eknath Khadse without sanction to prosecute the IPS officer.
The new investigating officer, police inspector Ajay Sawant, is likely to bring this “error” to the notice of additional chief metropolitan magistrate M S Bade at Esplanade court where the chargesheet was filed. The court is yet to take cognisance of the chargesheet.
According to the chargesheet, Raut and Khadse’s phones were illegally tapped by Shukla after obtaining orders claiming the owners of the phone numbers were “anti-social elements”. It chargesheet contained statements of nearly two dozen government officials as witnesses, including policemen posted at State Intelligence Department (SID). Statements of six key witnesses were also recorded before the metropolitan magistrate.
The police had earlier pressed charges under section 165 (public servant obtaining any valuable thing, without consideration, from a person concerned in any proceeding or business transacted by such public servant) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sections of the Telegraph Act. At the time of filing the chargesheet, the police added sections 465 (forgery) and 471 (fraudulently or dishonestly using as genuine any forged document) of IPC.
Pandey had also transferred the Official Secrets Act case against Shukla to Colaba police station and entrusted it to Mohite. On July 22, the Eknath Shinde-led government handed over the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
The case was initially registered against unknown persons for leaking a classified report about purported corruption in transfers and postings of senior police officials in Maharashtra, prepared by Shukla when she was the SID chief.
Mohite, 50, was the go-to guy in the tussle between the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi government and the Central government. He was entrusted the task of investigating several politically sensitive cases.