Mumbai: Confidential info leak case probe transferred from crime branch

A source said that earlier this week, the case was transferred from the BKC cyber police station to the Colaba police where inspector Sanjay Mohite has been asked to investigate the matter. Mohite is the same officer who earlier investigated the phone tapping case against IPS officer Rashmi Shukla and filed a chargesheet in the matter.

An officer said, “The BKC cyber police that reports to the crime branch has already conducted a major chunk of the investigation in the case and nearly 25 statements have been recorded, including that of former CM Fadnavis and IPS officer Rashmi Shukla. So far, there is no clarity on the reasons behind the transfer of the case.” Currently, in the FIR, no one has been named as an accused in the case.

The Mumbai police had registered an FIR in March last year against unknown persons under the Official Secrets Act (OSA), days after Fadnavis had alleged there was hectic lobbying by IPS officers for plum postings in exchange for money with politicians in the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government. Fadnavis said that he has 6.3 GB worth of data of call records obtained from phone tapping allegedly conducted by the then SID commissioner Shukla in which names of several key police officers were discussed.

The MVA government asked the then Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Sitaram Kunte to inquire into the phone tapping and how the recordings were leaked out.

Kunte, in his report, alleged that Shukla deliberately misled the government into tapping phones.