Bihar DGP warns of legal action if IPS officer not allowed to leave Mumbai today

    (Eds: Adds inputs)
    Patna, Aug 6 (PTI) Bihar police chief Gupteshwar
Pandey on Thursday warned of legal action if an IPS officer,
who had gone to Mumbai to probe actor Sushant Singh Rajput
death case, was not released from "forcible quarantine" by the
end of the day.
    Pandey expressed bewilderment over no positive
response from the municipal authorities in Mumbai, whom he
accused of keeping IPS officer Vinay Tiwari in virtual house
arrest, despite being informed about the adverse remarks made
by Supreme Court against their action.
    Talking to reporters, the DGP said he will consult the
state's Advocate General on the matter and, if Tiwari, posted
as SP, City (East) in Patna, was not allowed to leave by
today, moving the court could be an option.
    It is a virtual house arrest. Our officer went to
Mumbai after informing his counterparts there in writing and
over phone. I too had sent an SMS to my counterpart in
Maharashtra informing him that Tiwari will be there for three
days and shared with him the details, Pandey said.
    Tiwari had requested for an accommodation in the IPS
Mess, which was not granted. We let it go. But his forcible
quarantine shortly after his reaching Mumbai is unacceptable.
The IG, Patna Zone, wrote to the BMC chief quoting the
guidelines of the Maharashtra government under which Tiwari
could have been exempted from quarantine. It elicited no
positive response, he lamented.
    Pandey said yesterday, when the Supreme Court also
frowned upon the treatment meted out to Tiwari and called it
"unprofessional", the IGP again contacted the municipal
authorities, but nothing came of it.
    "We shall now be waiting till the end of the day and
consulting the Advocate General in the meantime. If all else
fails, moving the court could be an option, Pandey added.
Meanwhile, a four-member team of Patna police which had
been camping in Mumbai for more than a week and carrying out
investigation in the matter, returned from the western
metropolis but refused to be drawn into any controversy
relating to the matter.
    All went fine. We carried out our probe as per the
instructions of our seniors. Whatever our findings have been,
we will share these with our higher-ups, the officials said
in response to a barrage of questions from journalists here
upon arrival.
    They also side-stepped queries about reported non-
cooperation by the Mumbai police.
    During their stay in Mumbai, they recorded the
statements of Rajput's sister, his former girlfriend Ankita
Lokhande, director Rumi Jaffrey, the late actor's flatmate
Siddharth Pithani, his manager, cook, doctors among others, a
member of the team earier said before leaving for Bihar.
    The team had also visited some banks to look into the
financial transactions made from Rajput's accounts.
    The 34-year-old actor was found dead inside his Bandra
residence on June 14 last and an FIR was lodged by his father
K K Singh, who resides in Patna, at a local police station on
July 25.
    A tug of war ensued between the governments of the two
states with Maharashtra contending that Bihar had no
jurisdiction in the matter since the death took place outside
the state.
    A petition challenging Bihar police's jurisdiction to
probe the case was also filed in the Supreme Court by actress
Rhea Chakraborty, who along with her family members has been
named as the main accused in the FIR lodged by Rajput's
father.
    She has been accused of abetting the actor's suicide,
keeping him in wrongful confinement, and defrauding him of
crores of rupees.
    The impasse led the bereaved father to call up Pandey
and request that the matter be handed over to the CBI which
was followed, the same day, by a recommendation to the effect
by the Nitish Kumar government.
The Centre, too, issued a notification approving the
recommendation, in an apparent rebuff to the Shiv Sena-NCP-
Congress government in Maharashtra that there was no need to
hand over the matter to the CBI. PTI NAC
SK SK

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)