Maharashtra: CBI arrests middleman in Anil Deshmukh corruption case

MUMBAI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested Thane resident Santosh Jagtap in a corruption case that the agency is investigating against former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh.
The CBI produced Jagtap before a court on Sunday and the court remanded him into CBI custody till November 4.
Jagtap was stated to be a middleman in the transfer and posting of police officers during the tenure of Deshmukh as home minister.He had been avoiding CBI summons for quite some time now and has now been arrested from his home at Thane.
The CBI is investigating the corruption case against Deshmukh wherein former Mumbai Police commissioner Param Bir Singh has alleged that the NCP leader had asked now-dismissed police officer Sachin Waze to illegally collect Rs 100 crore from bar owners in the city every month for him.
In this case, the CBI is also investigating former State Intelligence Department (SID) chief Rashmi Shukla’s report where it was alleged that some "influential people" were promising desired posting-transfer to police officers.
The SID had also recorded the phone conversations of the influential persons.
Earlier, in a separate case, the CBI had arrested Deshmukh’s lawyer Anand Daga and CBI sub-inspector Abhishek Tiwari, who was associated with the probe at the initial stage, for attempting to influence the ongoing corruption investigation. It was alleged that Tiwari had passed the PE-related documents and information to Daga for a bribe.
Recently, a purported CBI report which gave Deshmukh a clean chit during the initial stage of preliminary enquiry (PE) where he was accused of corruption, was circulated in the media. The CBI registered a separate case related to the leakage of the report against its officials and Daga, for attempting to subvert the ongoing investigation against Deshmukh.
The CBI officials had then told TOI that the FIR registered against Deshmukh was based on the final findings of PE, which mentioned that a cognizable case has been made out and that the agency had subsequently registered a corruption case against Deshmukh.
During the investigation of leakage of the purported PE report, CBI found its officer's (Tiwari) involvement in it. It is alleged that Anand Daga bribed Tiwari by giving him an iPhone 12 Pro worth Rs 1 lakh besides money on different occasions for passing case-related sensitive documents and information.
CBI had said that Tiwari shared copies of the memorandum of proceedings, sealing-unsealing memorandum, statement, seizure memos and other crucial documents with Daga through WhatsApp on many occasions.
CBI suspects that Daga had befriended Tiwari for the sensitive documents on the direction of the Deshmukh family and is inquiring their role in the case.