The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday filed a chargesheet against former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh, his personal assistant Kundan Shinde, and personal secretary Sanjeev Palande in the sessions court. The three have been arrested by the agency in a corruption case.
The chargesheet will now be checked by the court registry staff to ensure that all the papers mentioned in the index are in order in the original and the copies, which will be submitted before the special CBI court hearing the case and will be given to the accused.
The agency had on April 21, 2021, registered a first information report (FIR) against Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Deshmukh and others, on the basis of allegations of corruption levelled by former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh.
In a letter to chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and others on March 20, 2021, Singh alleged that Deshmukh had instructed certain Mumbai police officers, including dismissed assistant inspector Sachin Vaze, to collect ₹100 crore every month from restaurants and bars in the city.
Vaze is the prime accused in the Antilia explosives scare and the subsequent murder of Thane trader Mansukh Hiran.
Based on the CBI’s FIR, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had on May 11, last year, registered an enforcement case information report against Deshmukh and others.
As part of its probe into the money-laundering aspects of the corruption case, the ED arrested Shinde and Palande on June 26. The arrests came after its investigation revealed that on Deshmukh’s instructions, Vaze had allegedly called a meeting of some bar owners, and between December 2020 and February 2021, collected ₹4.70 crore from the owners of orchestra bars in Mumbai to avoid police interference in the functioning of their establishments. In his statement to the agency, Vaze had said that he had handed over the “extorted money” in two instalments to Shinde.
On August 23, 2021, the ED filed a chargesheet against Shinde and Palande and also named Vaze as an accused in the money-laundering case, claiming that the dismissed police officer had played an active role in the purported extortion racket.
Deshmukh was arrested by the ED on November 2 and a 7,000-page chargesheet was filed against him on December 29. The agency also named the 73-year-old NCP leader’s son Hrishikesh as an accused in the case. Hrishikesh has since applied to the sessions court for anticipatory bail and the plea is still pending.
The CBI on April 2, 2022, arrested Shinde, Palande and Vaze. Two days later, Deshmukh was arrested by the Central agency. On April 16, Deshmukh, Shinde and Palande were sent to Arthur Road jail in central Mumbai, whereas Vaze was lodged in Taloja jail after the special CBI court remanded them in judicial custody.