Maha govt has given documents to CBI for probe against Anil Deshmukh: HC told

Mumbai

The Maharashtra government has handed over to the CBI thedocuments pertaining to a report submitted by senior IPS officer Rashmi Shuklaon alleged corruption in police transfers and postings for its probe againstformer state home minister Anil Deshmukh, the central probe agency on Thursdaytold the Bombay High Court.

Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh, appearing for the Central Bureau ofInvestigation (CBI), told a division bench of Justices S S Shinde and N JJamadar that the documents have been provided as assured by the stategovernment.

Singh said the central agency would go through the documents and check if thecourt orders have been complied with. The court was hearing an applicationfiled by the CBI, claiming that the government was not cooperating by refusingto hand over certain documents which the agency requires for its investigationagainst Deshmukh over alleged corruption and misuse of official position.

The state government had initially refused to hand over the documents claimingthat the papers sought by the CBI did not have any relevance with its probeagainst Deshmukh.

However, the bench had last month asked the government to reconsider anddirected it to tell if it was willing to share some of the documents. The stategovernment then agreed to sharing some of the documents with the CBI.

After hearing Singh, the court on Thursday adjourned the matter for furtherhearing after two weeks. The court reiterated that such matters with regard tosharing of information for investigation purposes should be solved between thetwo agencies instead of bringing them to court.

The documents sought by the CBI included the letter submitted by Shukla to theDirector General of Police - Maharashtra, which included a report on allegedcorruption in police transfer and postings, annexures of the report and thepanchnama that showed how the documents had been transferred from onedepartment to another.

The CBI, in its application filed last month, had said that it had written aletter to the State Intelligence Department (SID) seeking details of acommunication sent by senior IPS officer Rashmi Shukla on the issue ofcorruption in police transfers and postings, but the SID had refused to providethem claiming it was part of an ongoing investigation.

The high court had on July 22 held that the CBI can inquire the allegations ofcorruption in transfers and postings of police personnel limited to its nexuswith Deshmukh and had dismissed a petition filed by the Maharashtra governmentseeking that some parts of the central agency's FIR against the NCP leader bequashed.

On April 21, the CBI had registered an FIR against Deshmukh on charges ofcorruption and misuse of official position. The FIR was filed after the agencyconducted a preliminary inquiry against the state's former home ministerfollowing an order from the high court on April 5.

Deshmukh had resigned from the post of state home minister the same day, butdenied any wrongdoing.