The CBI on Monday asked former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh to join investigation into the allegation of extortion levelled against him by former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh. The agency has asked Deshmukh to appear before it on April 14. The decision to call Deshmukh, though entirely expected, was taken soon after the agency questioned Mumbai police ACP Sanjay Patil once again for over three hours. In his letter to Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray, Singh had referred to Patil's messages on WhatsApp to level the charge against Deshmukh. On Sunday, the CBI had questioned two of Deshmukh's personal assistants.
The CBI team, sources indicated, quizzed Patil on some technical details regarding WhatsApp chats which it has collected during the probe, sources said.
The Supreme Court earlier allowed the CBI to go ahead with its probe into Param Bir Singh’s allegations against the NCP functionary of extortion, bribes for transfers and interference in investigations into important criminal cases.
A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Hemant Gupta said probe by an independent agency was needed in the case in view of involvement of high-profile figures of the level of minister and former Mumbai police chief in the controversy. The bench said the minister and the police chief were hand in glove and working together till they fell apart. The bench said it was not a case of corporate or political rivalry but a "virtual right hand man" of the minister making allegations against him.
Senior advocates A M Singhvi and Kapil Sibal, appearing respectively for the Maharashtra government and Deshmukh, tried their best to convince the bench that the HC order was illegal as it was passed without giving an opportunity to the minister to counter the allegations and it will set a bad precedent if a probe is ordered on hearsay without credible evidence against a person. They invoked the SC verdict in the Birla-Sahara diary case to emphasise that investigation against a person can be ordered only when there is prima facie evidence against him and not on the basis of diary entry or allegations. Sibal said that law must be equally applicable to all.
But the court dismissed their plea and was so convinced about the correctness of the HC order that the order was passed without hearing Param Bir Singh and other opposite parties. Senior advocates Harish Salve, Mukul Rohatgi and Ranjit Kumar did not have to argue the case against the state government and the former minister.
