After the Supreme Court refused to entertain his similar plea, Mumbai’s former Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh on Thursday moved the Bombay High Court, seeking a CBI investigation into the alleged corruption charges against Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh.
A day after the apex court the matter flagged by him as “very serious affecting administration of a state” but asked him move the high court, Singh filed a criminal Public Interest Litigation (PIL) reiterating his earlier allegations and seeking an “immediate, unbiased, impartial” CBI probe against Deshmukh.
A HC bench headed by Chief Justice Dipankar Datta is likely to hear Singh’s PIL next week.Singh had created a sensation on Saturday last by shooting off a letter to chief minister Uddhav Thackeray alleging that State Home Minister Anil Deshmukh of the NCP had asked suspended police officer Sachin Vaze last month to “collect” a staggering Rs 100 crore per month from bars, restaurants and other sources.
State Home minister Deshmukh had swiftly debunked Singh’s charge, saying that the former Police Commissioner had made false allegations “to save himself, as the involvement of Sachin Waze in Mukesh Ambani & Mansukh Hiran’s case is becoming clearer from the investigation carried out so far & threads are leading to Mr. Singh as well”.
Among other things, Singh sought an HC direction to the CBI to secure CCTV footage from Deshmukh’s residence from earlier this year before it was “destroyed,” and to the state government to produce all records of communication received from IPS officer Rashmi Shukla in March 2020.