Bombay High Court has given relief to senior IPS officer and former head of the state intelligence department Rashmi Shukla. The court has quashed two FIRs lodged against her for alleged illegal phone tapping. An FIR against Shukla was registered in Pune, while the second FIR was lodged at Colaba police station. This FIR was registered when Mahavikas Aghadi was in power. Shukla was accused of tapping the phones of opposition leaders. On Friday, a bench of Justice Ajay Gadkari and Justice Sharmila Deshmukh heard Shukla’s petition. Senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, appearing for Shukla, said that a ‘C Summary’ report has been filed against his client in the case registered in Pune. This report is filed when the FIR is lodged due to a factual error. This would make the matter neither true nor false. Due to this situation, the police have filed a closure report, while the government has refused to give sanction to prosecute the case registered in Mumbai. In such a situation, both these FIRs should be canceled.
The incident occurred when Devendra Fadnavis was the Chief Minister of Maharashtra. Two FIRs were registered against Shukla in Pune and Colaba in south Mumbai in connection with alleged illegal phone tapping of opposition leaders. Both the FIRs were filed during the tenure of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government.
Rashmi Shukla’s lawyer Mahesh Jethmalani informed the court on Friday that the police had submitted a ‘C-Summary Report’ (the case is neither true nor false) in connection with the FIR lodged in Pune and had sought permission to close the case. At the same time, in the Mumbai case, the government refused to give permission to prosecute Shukla.
The division bench of Justice A.S. Gadkari and Justice Sharmila Deshmukh accepted this and quashed both the FIRs. The case registered in Pune was related to the alleged recording of phone calls of Congress leader Nana Patole, while the Mumbai case was related to the phone tapping of Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Eknath Khadse. Khadse was earlier in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Earlier, state Advocate General Birendra Saraf said, the state Home Department has refused to give sanction to Mumbai Police to prosecute the accused (Shukla). In the Pune case, the complainant has not taken any steps against the closure report.
