Unmesh Gujarathi
Sprouts Brand Story

A notice was served by Enforcement Directorate (ED) to Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey within three days after he retired on June 30. On Tuesday he presented himself before ED in New Delhi for inquiry.

Pandey is known as an honest, non-corrupt, duty conscience and has the courage of conviction. To launch an inquiry against such a dedicated officer is shocking news to Mumbaikars.

The scam in NSE’s co-location facility has been linked to the Isec Services Private Ltd run by the Pandey family. In fact, Sanjay Pandey resigned from this company in 2006. Thereafter his mother and son were the directors of this company.

The security audit of the NSE was conducted in 2012. Pandey was accused of not providing the details of the alleged scam in NSE to the auditors. That is the reason he is being implicated in the reported NSE scam.

In the research conducted by the Sprouts Special Investigation Team ( SIT ), striking revelations that the illegal phone-tapping by Dr. Rashmi Shukla is the real reason for all this mess has come to the fore.

The then Commissioner of Maharashtra State Intelligence Department Dr. Rashmi Shukla, had illegally tapped phone conversations of many top MVA leaders. The MVA top brass had alleged that current Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was the mastermind behind this. The MVA leaders had also presented a pen drive in the press conference to substantiate their allegations.

Pandey had registered an offense against Shukla, on behalf of Mumbai police, even before the MVA leaders held the press conference. After the complaint was lodged, Shukla was in tears and had also moved to the Bombay High court. However, Pandey did not budge and began a thorough probe. Finally, the MVA decided to lodge an offense against Fadnavis. The BJP leader then quickly worked out a plan to topple the MVA Government, to save his political career from this ignominy.

The tenure of Sanjay Pandey as the Mumbai Police Commissioner was of only four months. In his short tenure, he registered offenses against BJP leaders including former CM and current union Minister Narayan Rane (BJP), his son Nitesh Rane, Kirit Somaiya, and Mohit Kamboj – Bharatiya, BJP supporter Independent MP Navneet Rana, Independent MLA Ravi Rana and made their life miserable. That is the reason, the BJP leaders are pouring out their anger against Pandey.

Now the BJP-backed Government is in power in Maharashtra. As such the inquiry against Shukla and others linked to phone tapping will be closed and the attempts will be made to trap Pandey further.

This will send a wrong signal among police ranks and no honest police officer will register an offense against any politician and will conduct an inquiry. Needless to say that this will set a wrong precedent.