The muted grumbling over Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Pradeep Sawant being partial towards his pet team has become a roar. Twelve units of 20 cops each are angry that while they do the drudgery of the Crime Branch, all special assignments are reserved for Sawant’s blue-eyed boys, the Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU). In the police hierarchy, the Crime Branch is special. At any crime scene, they are the ones in plain clothes, melting into the crowd and working on a parallel inquiry with the police stations. Case of Favouritism? Cases Sawant’s favourite men get to do • IC-814 hijack case: Arrest of three Harkat militants from a flat in Behram Baug, Jogeshwari, with a stash of weapons and a communications system. • Arrest of Pawan Kumar Pandey, most wanted in UP • Arrest of the Bollywood financier Bharat Shah and film-maker Nazim Rizvi for their links with the underworld And what the others have worked on lately • The Ghatkopar, Powai and Andheri units are looking into recent blast cases The Bandra unit recently conducted raids on illegal telephone exchanges • The Dharavi unit has remained silent since January, when they seized fake stamps worth Rs 837 crore • The Kandivli unit hit headlines when they arrested 23 bookies in February, only to release them soon after. The bravery factor is high and teams crave for important cases. Anything to do with the underworld, inter-state criminals and terrorists is a plum assignment. On March 29, tempers ran high when the CIU was entrusted with the task of handling three Lashkar-e-Toiba militants. Similarly, the operation against UP gangsters last week fell in CIU’s lap.An officer, on condition of anonymity, said: ‘‘Most high-profile case information comes from the central intelligence agencies. It is the DCP’s job to see that work is divided equally.’’ Police Commissioner R.S. Sharma feigned ignorance of the matter. ‘‘I do not know of any such thing happening in the crime branch. If it is, it is wrong. There should be no favouritism of any kind,’’ Sharma said. But Sawant insists he is fair. ‘‘It’s not favouritism.I give work to this particular team because the officers show their potential and work hard,” he said.
