Param Bir Singh Letter Bomb

In a handwritten letter dated April 3, a copy of which has been viewed by IANS, Vaze has claimed that NCP chief Sharad Pawar was against his reinstatement into Mumbai Police in 2020 and wanted it to be revoked. However, senior officials of the NIA remained tightlipped on the authenticity of Vaze's letter.

It details Assistant Police Inspector (API) Vaze's nine-month long tenure in the elite Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU) of Mumbai Police's Crime Branch and categorically says he was reinstated by Singh in June 2020, after a decision of the Police Establishment Board, despite opposition from top police officers then.

The source said that after the agency registered a preliminary enquiry (PE) on Tuesday night following the orders of the Bombay High Court, another team of the Anti-Corruption department of the premiere investigative agency left for Mumbai on Wednesday morning.

Speaking to mediapersons, Walse-Patil also said that the state government will extend full cooperation to the Central Bureau of Investigations into its probe on the accusations levelled by former Mumbai Commissioner of Police Param Bir Singh.

Vaze, currently in NIA custody till Thursday, was seen entering the hotel where he spent at least five days in mid-February using some fake identity papers and the woman close behind him was noticed, baffling the investigators, official sources said. Though her antecedents are not clear, she is reportedly from Gujarat and may have been involved in some other case being probed by the Mumbai Crime Branch's elite Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU).

"The petitioner was time and again pressurised by the Minister for Home, Government of Maharashtra to probe the role of certain leaders of BJP and somehow implicate them. It is submitted that there was tremendous pressure to give the entire episode a political angle. The petitioner however did not succumb to the pressure," he said in the petition.

Singh urged the top court to quash his transfer orders, which he has termed "illegal and arbitrary" and a CBI probe to be carried out immediately before pieces of evidence are destroyed. Singh's plea contended that since February 2021, Deshmukh had been holding meetings at his residence with police officers -- including Sachin Vaze of Crime Intelligence Unit, Mumbai and Sanjay Patil, ACP Social Service Branch, Mumbai -- bypassing their seniors.

NCP National Spokesperson and Minority Affairs Minister Nawab Malik said there were "too many" loopholes and until a full-fledged probe was carried out into all allegations raised, "there's no question of Deshmukh's resignation". Malik said that he (Singh) wrote the letter after he had been removed from the post of Mumbai CP.

In a letter to Maharashtra's Additional Chief Secretary, Home, in February, Dange said that on November 22, 2019, Jeetu Navlani threatened him when the Inspector was trying to get the pubs closed on time in the Breach Candy area. Navlani, the owner of Dirty Buns Sobo club, tried to pressurise the inspector by claiming close links with Param Bir Singh, who was then DG, Anti Corruption.

Param Bir Singh dropped a 'letter-bomb' on Saturday evening that triggered a huge political row in the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi government in Maharashtra, of which the NCP is an integral part. In the letter, Singh had hit out at Deshmukh by alleging that the minister wanted his team member, arrested cop Sachin Vaze, to 'collect' Rs 100 crore per month from bars and hookah parlours.