Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh rejected all allegations made by former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh against him and said he would file a defamation case against the IPS officer. Deshmukh asked Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to conduct an unbiased and fair probe into the matter.
Singh, who was recently shunted out as the city police commissioner over some "unforgivable mistakes" in the Antilia bomb scare case, had shot off an explosive letter to the chief minister, accusing Deshmukh of extortion.
Singh claimed in his letter that Deshmukh had directed suspended police officer Sachin Vaze to collect Rs 100 crore every month from bars, restaurants and other establishments in Mumbai.
He said Vaze, who was heading the Crime Intelligence Unit of the Crime Branch of Mumbai Police, was called by Deshmukh to his official residence several times in the last few months and repeatedly instructed to assist in collection of funds for him.
Deshmukh, however, rejected these allegations as false and dared Singh to prove them. He said the IPS officer was raising such allegations as part of a conspiracy to save himself and to malign the image of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government.
“On 16th March, When he realised that he will be removed from the post of Police Commissioner the next day on 17th, he deliberately asked a few questions to ACP Mr. Patil and got conveniently got expected answers out of it. This was a part of Mr. Parambir Singh’s larger conspiracy. It seems as if he intended to get ‘specific’ answers from these chats so that he can term them as ‘evidence’ later. You can clearly see the desperation of Mr. Singh through these chats. In the chats it is clear that Mr. Singh was leading the conversation to repetitively get particular information from Mr. Patil, why was that?,” the minister said in a statement.
Singh, who was under fire over the handling of the bomb scare outside industrialist Mukesh Ambani's house in south Mumbai, was on Wednesday transferred to the low-key Home Guard by the the state government. Acting Director General of Police of state Hemant Nagrale replaced him.
Assistant police inspector Vaze was recently arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) over its probe into the recovery of the explosives-laden SUV near Ambani's house on February 25.
Deshmukh said he had mentioned in an interview to a daily that Singh was removed from the post after some serious issues against him came to his notice.
“Everyone in the Police department is very well aware that Sachin Waze and ACP Patil are very close to Mr. Parambir Singh. It was Mr. Singh who reinstated Mr. Waze who was suspended for 16 years,” the minister said.
He further asked if Singh is claiming that Sachin Vaze gave him all this information in January, why he was silent about these allegations for so many days.