Mumbai: For the past two and half years, it looked very likely that senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Rashmi Shukla will be arrested by the Maharashtra police for “direct involvement” in the alleged illegal phone tapping of several politicians from the Congress and Shiv Sena. She had to move both the lower judiciary and the Bombay high court to prevent her arrest. However, over the last few weeks, things have changed drastically in her favour.
Once branded as the prime accused in at least three cases of alleged phone tapping, the state police have now given Shukla a clean chit. Meanwhile, the Maharashtra home department, handled by Devendra Fadnavis, is also likely to get her back to the state cadre. Shukla is expected to be empanelled as director general in the next few days.
Shukla is an IPS officer of the 1988 batch who is known for her proximity to the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party and more specifically, to Fadnavis. She came under the scanner in 2020, after the Shiv Sena-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition came to power in the state. A barrage of accusations were levelled against her, including that she illegally tapped the phones of Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Eknath Khadse.
Fadanvis, then the leader of the opposition, had claimed that Shukla was merely “exercising her duty” and that the alleged phone tapping led to the unearthing of corruption in transfers and postings of many senior police officers in the state. He accused then home minister Anil Deshmukh of playing a role in these illegal transfers. Both Raut and Deshmukh have been arrested by central agencies like the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation – for corruption and money laundering – and both have maintained that their arrests were the outcome of political vendetta.
Shukla, who retires in June 2024, is the most senior officer in the state after the state’s director general of police (DGP) Hemant Nagrale, who will retire in the next few days.
After Shukla faced a series of allegations, she was sent on central deputation as an additional director general of the Central Reserve Police Force in Hyderabad. The Union government’s decision to give Shukla a central posting even when she was under the scanner was criticised by the MVA government as a clear attempt to “shield” the officer.
But the MVA government pursued the investigation against her with rigour and the state home department had opposed her pre-arrest bail at every stage. But after the tripartite coalition government fell in June this year, the new government headed by Eknath Shinde-Fadnavis decided not to pursue the charges against her.
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Early this month, the Pune police filed a “c- summary” report – filed when a case is registered “by mistake” – before a magistrate court in a case that alleged that senior Congress leader Nana Patole’s phone was illegally tapped. The case was registered in February and accused Shukla of tapping the phone while she was posted as the Pune city police commissioner during the BJP government’s tenure.
In March, the Colaba police registered an FIR based on a complaint lodged by the additional commissioner of police (Special Branch) Rajiv Jain accusing Shukla of illegally tapping the phones of Raut and Khadse. This, Jain claimed in the FIR, happened during Shukla’s stint as the head of the State Intelligence Department (SID). Following the investigation, the police filed a 750-page chargesheet.
Overlooking the police’s investigation and the findings in the chargesheet, the state government is now likely to send a ‘vigilance clearance report’ to the Union government, clearing the path for Shukla to take over as the state DGP or Mumbai city police commissioner.
During her stint as Pune police commissioner, Shukla was also criticised for her department’s handling of the Elgar Parishad case, in which several human rights defenders and academics were arrested.