JOIN USIPS officer Rashmi Shukla misled Maharashtra govt while seeking phone tapping nod: Minister
A day after senior IPS officer Rashmi Shukla told the Bombay High Court that Maharashtra government gave her permission last year for intercepting certain phone numbers to verify complaints of corruption in police transfers and postings, state minister Nawab Malik said she misled the government while seeking the nod.
Shukla, a 1988-batch IPS officer, had cited sedition as a reason for seeking permission to tap the phones, the minister told reporters, adding the permission was obtained by misleading the government.
“Did Shukla seek the permission from the then chief minister,” Malik asked, in a veiled reference to BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis, who was the chief minister during 2014-19. A state minister had earlier this year claimed that Shukla was close to the BJP.
She had sought phone tapping permission under the excuses of sedition and national interest, but tapped the calls of (BJP’s) political opponents, Malik said. Shukla’s counsel Mahesh Jethmalani had informed the court that when she was heading the state intelligence department, she was directed by the Maharashtra Director General of Police (DGP) to conduct surveillance of a few phone numbers.
"The numbers belonged to a few brokers with political connections indulging in corruption and demanding massive monetary compensation for plum postings and transfers," Jethmalani had said.
The court was hearing a petition filed by Shukla challenging an FIR filed against her by the Mumbai police's cyber cell in a case of illegal phone tapping and alleged leaking of sensitive documents.
Shukla had earlier said that as commissioner (state intelligence) last year, she came across information of corrupt malpractices between politicians and police officers over “favourable” postings and transfers.
She said that with the permission of “competent authority”, telephones of certain politicians and police officers were kept under surveillance and in August 2020, she submitted a detailed report to the then director general of police Subodh Jaiswal (now CBI chief) and sought necessary action.
She had also claimed to have shown the damaging call transcript and data to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray in August last year.
Thackeray is heading the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress post-election alliance government which came to power in November 2019. She claimed that on September 2 last year, she was “illegally and arbitrarily transferred” to the post of DG (civic defence). She is now the additional director general of the Central Reserve Police Force's (CRPF) South Zone at Hyderabad.
Shukla said the state government's then Additional Chief Secretary Sitaram Kunte (now the state Chief Secretary) had allowed her in July 2020 to carry out the surveillance. Earlier this year, Fadnavis had cited a letter purportedly written by Shukla to the then DGP about alleged corruption in police transfers.
The letter also had details of intercepted calls, leading to an uproar with leaders of the Shiv Sena-led ruling coalition alleging that Shukla tapped phones without permission.
Before the registration of the FIR, Kunte had alleged in a report submitted to Thackeray that it appears that Shukla herself had leaked the confidential report.