Phones of Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut and NCP leader Eknath Khadse were tapped on their pretext as anti-social elements, said Mumbai Police. During the investigation, it was found, that some other names were mentioned as anti-social elements in State Intelligence Dept (SID) letter which was sent to ACS Home for phone tapping that’s why the ACS permitted the same.
The Maharashtra government formed a three-member committee headed by the director-general of police (DGP) Sanjay Pandey to probe the allegations of tapping of phones of elected representatives during the former CM Devendra Fadnavis’s government. Ashutosh Dumbre, commissioner, state intelligence department (SID), and Sunil Kolhe, additional commissioner of police, special branch, are the other members of the committee. The panel is probing if the phones were tapped illegally for political motives and will fix the responsibility on those involved in it. The committee was asked to submit its report in three months.
Dilip Walse-Patil told the media that the committee has been asked to investigate all phone tapping cases conducted in the past five years between 2015 and 2019. It will examine if the phones of elected representatives were tapped for ulterior political motives and by illegal means. Mumbai crime branch already recorded the statement of Opposition leader and former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis in a case about alleged phone-tapping carried out by the State Intelligence Department (SID).
In March 2021, Fadnavis revealed that several IPS officers were lobbying for posting in exchange for money. Fadnavis said that he has 6.3 GB of data of call records obtained from phone tapping allegedly conducted by the then State Intelligence Department (SID) commissioner Rashmi Shukla in which names of several key police officers were discussed.
Alleging that corruption was taking place on a large scale in police transfers in Maharashtra, Fadnavis read out a report publicly that Shukla had written to former DGP Subhodh Jaiswal. The then DGP forwarded the report to then Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Sitaram Kunte for action. Following this, the government instructed Kunte to inquire into the incident, who then in his report, alleged that Shukla deliberately misled the government to tap phones.
