Dismissed cop Sachin Waze withdraws plea in Bombay High Court against judicial panel orders

Sachin Waze. File Photo

Dismissed policeman Sachin Waze on Wednesday unconditionally withdrew his petition in the Bombay High Court challenging two orders of the panel set up to probe into the corruption allegations against former Maharashtra minister Anil Deshmukh.

Waze, who is presently in jail after his arrest in the Antilia bomb scare and murder case of businessman Mansukh Hiran, withdrew his plea after the High Court on Tuesday said it was not inclined to grant any relief.

A division bench of Justices Gautam Patel and Madhav Jamdar had on Tuesday expressed its displeasure with the former policeman for suppressing facts and not submitting all the documents in his petition.

The bench had noted that Waze's petition did not annex the affidavit submitted by him to the Chandiwal commission along with his application seeking to retract an earlier statement made by him on Deshmukh.

The court had then asked Waze's advocate Anil Anturkar to take instructions on whether he was willing to withdraw the petition.

"If he (Waze) does not wish to withdraw then, we will dismiss it with strictures," Justice Patel had said on Tuesday.

When the matter came up for hearing on Wednesday, Anturkar informed the court that Waze was withdrawing the petition unconditionally.

The court accepted the same. Waze, in his petition, challenged the legality, validity and propriety of the two orders passed by the one-member commission of retired Justice K U Chandiwal and sought to quash the same.

The first order of the panel refused Waze's application seeking to summon the Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Milind Bharambe for examination, while in the second order, the commission denied him permission to retract his earlier statement against Deshmukh.

Waze had filed an application before the Chandiwal Commission on January 21 this year, seeking to summon the then joint commissioner of police (Crime) Bharambe for examination before the Commission.

Bharambe had written a letter and later authored a report on March 25, 2021. Former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh had presented a copy of this secret letter along with Bharambe's report on March 30, 2021 before the commission.

Waze had sought to call Bharambe before the Commission claiming that the latter's report is prejudicial to his interest.

However, the Commission dismissed his application on January 24.

On February 9, Waze had made an application seeking to retract his statement with regard to Deshmukh. He had said that neither the former minister nor his associates or people related to him have ever made any monetary demand or instructed him to extort Rs 100 crore from the city's bar owners.

According to Waze's plea before the court, he had filed an affidavit before the Commission along with his application for retraction of his statement.

The former policeman had claimed that he was under immense and tremendous pressure due to his arrest by the Mumbai crime branch.

Waze has alleged that he was mentally harassed and victimised so as to affect his psyche and his state of mind, and claimed that he was subjected to severe mental torture and harassment apparently by Deshmukh and it continued even after his resignation.

Consequently, when the petitioner was put to certain questions at the time of his cross-examination before the committee, he gave incorrect answers, the plea stated.

Waze, in his petition, claimed that he is a whistleblower and has been falsely implicated in a series of criminal cases consequent to political vendetta arising out of the shocking revelations disclosed by him in the public domain through his senior officer.

The former policeman has claimed that he had confided in his senior officer about a series of demands made by Deshmukh, and based on this, the senior officer had written to the state government on March 20, 2021, following which a one-member committee headed by retired Justice K U Chandiwal was formed.

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