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

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

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

Singh said the central agency would go through the documents and check if the court orders have been complied with.

The court was hearing an application filed by the CBI, claiming that the government was not cooperating by refusing to hand over certain documents which the agency requires for its investigation against Deshmukh over alleged corruption and misuse of official position.

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

However, the bench had last month asked the government to reconsider and directed it to tell if it was willing to share some of the documents.

The state government then agreed to sharing some of the documents with the CBI.

After hearing Singh, the court on Thursday adjourned the matter for further hearing after two weeks.

The court reiterated that such matters with regard to sharing of information for investigation purposes should be solved between the two agencies instead of bringing them to court.

The documents sought by the CBI included the letter submitted by Shukla to the Director General of Police – Maharashtra, which included a report on alleged corruption in police transfer and postings, annexures of the report and the panchnama that showed how the documents had been transferred from one department to another.

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

The high court had on July 22 held that the CBI can inquire the allegations of corruption in transfers and postings of police personnel limited to its nexus with Deshmukh and had dismissed a petition filed by the Maharashtra government seeking that some parts of the central agency’s FIR against the NCP leader be quashed.

On April 21, the CBI had registered an FIR against Deshmukh on charges of corruption and misuse of official position. The FIR was filed after the agency conducted a preliminary inquiry against the state’s former home minister following an order from the high court on April 5.

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