A special PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) court on Monday allowed former home minister Anil Deshmukh to undergo coronary angiography and further treatment, if required, at Jaslok hospital.
The court directed the superintendent of Arthur Road jail, where the 73-year-old is lodged, to immediately admit him to the private hospital and asked the police to provide protection during his transport from the prison.
The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader, however, will have to pay for the test and the police escort. The court has allowed his wife and daughter to remain present in the hospital. The order came on an application filed by Deshmukh through advocate Inderpal Singh.
He was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on November 2, 2021, on money-laundering charges. The agency’s case, registered on May 11, is based on the FIR filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on April 21 that year after former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh accused him of extorting money from orchestra bars.
In a letter to then chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and others on March 20, 2021, Singh alleged that Deshmukh had instructed certain police officers, including dismissed assistant inspector Sachin Vaze, to collect ₹100 crore every month from Mumbai’s restaurants and bars.
The ED claimed that Vaze had called a meeting of bar owners, and between December 2020 and February 2021, collected ₹4.7 crore and handed over the “extorted money” in two instalments to Deshmukh’s personal assistant Kundan Shinde.