Less than a fortnight after it constituted a judicial probe under retired High Court Judge Kailash U Chandiwal into allegations of corruption against former State Home Minister Anil Deshmuh, the Maharashtra Government has initiated a departmental probe against Mumbai’s former police commissioner Param Bir Singh under senior IPS officer Sanjay Pandey for alleged breach of service rules and dereliction of duty.
In a development that has come in the midst of a Preliminary Inquiry (PE) launched by the CBI into Singh’s allegations of corruption made against Deshmukh, Pandey—who has been entrusted with additional charge as the State General Police – has begun the probe against the former city police commissioner.
The Maharashtra government has ordered the probe against Singh on the basis of a report submitted by Mumbai’s new Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale to it on matters relating to suspended and incarcerated police officer Sachin Vaze.
Among other things, Pandey will look into the charge about Singh’s alleged dereliction of duty arising out of his failure to keep the state government about his personal investigations into the alleged malpractices by Deshmukh, whether his charge of corruption made against the former state Home Minister had any substance, why had not only given so much importance to Vaze but also asked him report to him directly to him and whether he assigned Vaze to investigate the explosi8ve laden SUV recovery case.
In a report submitted to the State Home department on April 3, Nagrale also stated that Vaze was posted as the in-charge of the Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU) of the Mumbai police as per the orders of former Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh.
“API Sachin Vaze never reported to any officer of the Crime Branch during his tenure of nine months from 10/06/2020 to 12/03/2020. No officers of the Crime branch gaver any review/opinion/direction in the investigation handled by Sachin Vaze because he directly reported to the then Commissioner of Police,” the report stated.
“As per oral orders of the then commissioner of police, the then joint commissioner of police (crime) transferred police inspector Vinay Gorphade and Sudhakar Deshmukh to Unit 10 and Unit 1, respectively and Vaze was posted in-charge of CIU,” the report stated.
“Vaze has not followed the rules and he directly and independently reported to the then CoP (Singh) and he investigated under his guidance… was following the guidelines of (Singh) about raid on illegal activities, whom to arrest or not, to call whom as witness and accused of sensitive crimes,” stated the report.
Vaze, who jumped on his own into the investigations involving the recovery of explosive laden SUV near industrialist Mukesh Ambani’s skyscraper mansion in south Mumbai on February 25, also took up points of the CIU in remands, bail, anticipatory bail pleas and other critical decisions, and if he required manpower for various investigations, it was given as per Singh’s directions.
As the in-charge of CIU, Vaze handled sensational cases like TRP rigging scam, the Anvay Naik suicide case and the death of her mother Kumud Naik.