MUMBAI: The CBI on Thursday filed a chargesheet against former state home minister Anil Deshmukh, his former private assistant Kundan Shinde and former personal secretary Sanjeev Palande in a corruption case it investigated against them.
The CBI has not named dismissed API Sachin Waze as accused in the chargesheet as he has turned approver in the case against Deshmukh.
The CBI will continue its investigations against others involved, including Deshmukh’s family members. This is the first chargesheet against Deshmukh in the graft case registered in April 2021.
The CBI had also investigated Deshmukh in a separate related case where his lawyer Anand Daga allegedly bribed a CBI sub-inspector, Abhishek Tiwari, to influence investigations. CBI had arrested Daga and Tiwari last year.
Based on the CBI case, the ED also registered a money laundering case against Deshmukh and arrested him last November for laundering Rs 4. 5 crore that Waze had collected illegally from orchestra bar owners and handed over to Deshmukh’s aides on his instructions. Deshmukh is in judicial custody.
It is alleged Waze collected the money for Deshmukh, from which Rs 4. 5 crore was transferred to Deshmukh’s Nagpur-based educational trust through shell companies with the help of Delhi-based hawala operators.
Deshmukh landed in trouble last March after he shunted then Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh from his post after the Antilia bomb scare case and the businessman Mansukh Hiran murder controversies.
Singh then wrote a complaint to the CM alleging Deshmukh misused his post and directed Waze to collect Rs 100 crore from bar owners for him. The ED managed to trace a suspicious transaction of Rs 4. 5 crore, money it alleged Deshmukh routed to his trust through hawala operators.
Waze is a crucial link in the case, and he had moved court to become approver in the CBI’s corruption case and ED’s money laundering case against Deshmukh. On May 25, Waze submitted a plea in court seeking permission to turn approver and receive pardon. His confessional statement was recorded by a magistrate’s court on March 19.
Giving its nod to Waze’s plea, the CBI in its reply said that in his confessional statement, he had disclosed the “criminal involvement” of Deshmukh and Sanjeev Palande and Kundan Shinde about collection of bribes from orchestra bars and other establishments.
Waze had been reinstated into the police force during the lockdown after being out of the police service for more than 15 years for the custodial death of blast suspect Khwaja Yunus. The CBI said, “He was entrusted with most of the sensational and important cases of Mumbai and that the then Home Minister was in knowledge of the said fact. ”
The CBI said the confessional statement of Waze has been corroborated on material aspects by oral and documentary evidence collected. “However, on certain issues, his statement is very relevant,” said CBI in court.
