SC dismisses Maharashtra govt's plea seeking SIT probe against Anil Deshmukh

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a plea by the Maharashtra government for the formation of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) for probing corruption cases against former Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, who was also accused of giving a monthly extortion target of Rs 100 crore to the Mumbai police.

The state claimed the CBI with Subodh Kumar Jaiswal as its director should not be allowed to look into cases against Deshmukh as the officer was the former DGP of Maharashtra and part of the Police Establishment Board which oversaw the transfer and posting of the concerned police officers.

A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and M M Sundaresh, which had earlier ordered the transfer of probe in all cases against former Mumbai police chief Param Bir Singh, trashed the plea, saying, "It is complete red herrings".

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Appearing for the Maharashtra government, senior advocate C A Sundaram contended that the present director of CBI at the relevant time was the Chairman of the establishment board responsible for the transfer.

"He will either be possibly an accused or definitely a witness. I am not going into the likelihood of bias, a person who is relevant as a witness or an accused, he was directly involved," the counsel said.

He asked the top court to constitute an SIT to investigate the matter.

"It surely cannot be that a person who is responsible for actions complained about in FIR, be the person to conduct an investigation regarding that," he added.

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The bench, however, said it was not inclined to interfere in the matter.

The Maharashtra government questioned the validity of the High Court's order, which had held that the plea was an attempt to scuttle the ongoing probe against Deshmukh.

On March 24, the top court had allowed a plea by former Mumbai police commissioner Singh and ordered the transfer of all cases registered against him to the CBI to "bring out the truth" following a "murky churning in battle royale" between him and then Minister Deshmukh.

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In a letter to Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray after his transfer, Singh alleged Deshmukh had indulged in "malpractices" and asked for suspended Mumbai police officer Sachin Waze to collect Rs 100 crore every month.

Deshmukh is currently in jail in cases lodged by the Enforcement Directorate and Singh faced a number of criminal cases, besides disciplinary action.

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