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Former Maharashtra DGP Sanjay Pandey appears before Thane police in extortion case

Sanjay Pandey, who was the DGP under the MVA government, is accused of misusing his position, starting an illegal probe and extorting money from one Sanjay Punamiya.

Former state Director General of Police Sanjay Pandey(left) has been summoned by the Criminal Investigation Department on Wednesday to take his statement. (Express photo by Deepak joshi)

Former Maharashtra DGP Sanjay Pandey appeared before the Thane police crime branch on Wednesday in connection with an extortion case registered against him and other police personnel in August. He enjoys protection from arrest granted by the Bombay High Court till January 3.

The case was registered at the Thane Nagar police station on a complaint lodged by one Sanjay Punamiya, against whom two FIRs had been registered during the Maha Vikas Aghadi government, when Pandey was first the DGP and then the Mumbai police commissioner. After the Mahayuti government came to power, the cases registered against Punamiya were transferred to the CBI, which filed a closure report in the FIR in which former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh was also named as an accused.

An officer from the Thane police said that Pandey would be allowed to go after his statement is recorded.

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Punamiya alleged that Pandey had misused his position, initiated an illegal probe against him and extorted money from him and other businessmen by threatening to book them in false cases. Others booked in the case are Shymsundar Agrawal, a builder and rival of Punamiya, two other members of his family, and two police officers—Sardar Patil, who retired as an assistant commissioner of police, and inspector Manohar Patil.

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In his statement to the police, Punamiya claimed that when he was admitted to Saifee Hospital in 2021, Sardar Patil and two police officers visited him to record his statement. The police officers told him that Pandey, then director-general of police, had sent a message for him, saying his name would be cleared from the criminal case if he gave a statement implicating Eknath Shinde, Devendra Fadnavis and Param Bir Singh in an urban land ceiling scam. He had flatly refused the offer, he had claimed before the police.

Pandey, who retired as Mumbai police chief on June 30, 2022, was earlier arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case and later granted bail. The CBI has also registered a case against him and his firm, iSEC Services Pvt Ltd, for allegedly tapping phones of National Stock Exchange employees illegally for around eight years.

Pandey was granted anticipatory bail by the high court after a Thane court rejected his application for the relief on October 24.

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