Param Bir Singh accused former Maharashtra Home Minister of running an extortion racket.
A Maharashtra Police officer has filed a first information report (FIR) against former Mumbai top cop Param Bir Singh, replaced recently in the wake of the Ambani bomb scare episode, for attempting to help an accused and being involved in other acts of corruption. He has also been accused of harassing the complainant in the same case.
The FIR has been filed in Akola district by Police Inspector Bhimrao Ghadge and named 33 others, invoking 27 sections ranging from criminal conspiracy, destruction of evidence, and sections of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities Act), 1989.
The Akola police filed a Zero FIR (mode of lodging FIR in any police station irrespective of where an offence is committed) and it has been transferred to the Thane city police, officials told PTI.
Those named in the case include the Economic Offences Wing DCP Parag Manere, besides Mr Singh who now heads Maharashtra Home Guards.
Mr Ghagde has alleged that as Thane police chief, Mr Singh had asked him to not charge-sheet the individuals against whom FIRs were filed. The complainant, now posted in the Akola police control room, alleged that on his refusal to obey the instructions, five FIRs were filed against him and he was suspended.
Posted in Thane in 2015-2018, Mr Ghadge has alleged that during his tenure there, several officers had indulged in acts of corruption under Mr Singh.
The former Mumbai police chief, following his shunting out to the Home Guards on March 17, had accused former Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh of running an extortion racket under which he had used police personnel to sweep up to Rs 100 crore a month. Mr Deshmukh, too, later resigned from his position and the CBI filed an FIR in the matter.
The Uddhav Thackeray government then went on to order probes into other alleged affairs of Mr Singh.
He was replaced as Mumbai police chief after the probe into the Mukesh Ambani bomb scare case was found to be unsatisfactory. An explosive-laden vehicle was found parked outside the industrialist's south Mumbai residence in February. Later the NIA found that police officials Sachin Waze had a major role to play in the planting of the car.