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div id=”pcl-full-content”>Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on Tuesday took a dig at the newly appointed Maharashtra Director General of Police (DGP) Rashmi Shukla saying that “now precaution needs to be taken to ensure phones are not tapped”, in a reference to the phone-tapping allegations that had surfaced against the IPS officer earlier.
Asked about Shukla’s appointment as the DGP, Pawar, who was addressing a press conference at the NCP headquarters, said, “We will see how her remaining tenure proceeds. I think it is about six months. The only precaution we will have to take now is to ensure that our phones don’t get tapped.”
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Rashmi Shukla’s name was earlier linked to a phone-tapping scandal in Maharashtra under which the phones of the BJP’s political opponents were allegedly targeted. Maharashtra Congress Chief Nana Patole had even raised the issue in the Legislative Assembly seeking action against her.
Shukla was on central deputation heading the Sashastra Seema Bal, before which she was the additional director general of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). In Maharashtra, she had served as the Pune police commissioner and headed the State Intelligence Department when the previous Devendra Fadnavis-led government was in power.
Following her departure from the state, two FIRs – one each in Pune and Mumbai – were registered for allegedly tapping the phones of Opposition leaders like Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut, the NCP’s Eknath Khadse and state Congress chief Nana Patole during the Fadnavis government’s tenure.
A Mumbai police team had also recorded her statement in Hyderabad in connection with the case following which the officer moved court. The police then registered another FIR in which Shukla was not named as an accused.
Last year, the Bombay High Court quashed two of the three FIRs registered against her. After the Eknath Shinde-Fadnavis government came to power, the third case was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation(CBI). Later, this case too was closed after the court allowed the CBI’s closure report, paving the way for her return to the state.
After the Eknath Shinde-led rebellion in June 2022, which led to a split in the Shiv Sena and the subsequent fall of the Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government, speculation was rife that officers who suffered due to their proximity to Fadnavis would be brought back and “adequately compensated”.
There was buzz that Shukla, a 1988-batch IPS officer, would be brought back to the state and “rewarded with a good posting” with some predicting that she may be made the Mumbai police commissioner – the most sought-after post in the state.
Though she was reportedly keen on the commissioner’s post, the government was more inclined towards her becoming the DGP. After long deliberations, which included BJP leader Sudhir Mungantiwar congratulating her in October 2023 for becoming the DGP, the Maharashtra government officially appointed her as the state’s top cop on Thursday.
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