Mumbai, March 25: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday informed the state Assembly that the associates of an accused woman, who tried to extort money from Rural Development Minister Jaykumar Gore, were in direct contact with NCP SP leaders Supriya Sule and Rohit Pawar.

The Chief Minister said that the woman has already been arrested by laying a trap, and the police are currently investigating the case.

In his reply to a debate on the motion moved by opposition parties, the Chief Minister said that calls made between the associates of the accused woman with Supriya Sule and Rohit Pawar have been recorded.

“If politics is being done with the intention of removing someone from life, it is not right. The case regarding Gore was registered in 2016, it ended in 2019. He was not even in the ruling party at that time. But then suddenly, this case was revived,” said the Chief Minister.

“I appreciate his (minister’s) courage. A person tries to settle things in such a situation, but he complained after being demanded a bribe from an accused woman. The entire conversation was recorded. There are many clips of the conversation. After the Police Department was convinced, they set a trap. The accused woman was caught while actually taking the cash. Therefore, it was a form of blackmail,” said the Chief Minister.

The Chief Minister hinted at a nexus that was working in this case. “It was a kind of nexus. Three accused in this case have been arrested. One is the woman herself. The second is journalist Tushar Kharat, while the third is a person named Anil Subhedar. All of them had hatched this conspiracy together. All the evidence of this has been found. Their WhatsApp conversations have been found. About 150 of their phones have been found. How they hatched the conspiracy has come to light. But the unfortunate thing is that the Nationalist Congress Party was directly in touch with all of them,” he said.

The Chief Minister said that Prabhakar Deshmukh has spoken to these three accused 100 times directly, adding that the videos have been sent to them.

“They have also responded. But what I feel worse is that Supriya Sule and Rohit Pawar have made calls to Tushar Kharat, who runs a YouTube channel. The videos of Jayakumar Gore have been sent to Sule and Pawar by the accused. It will be investigated. But why is this happening? We are not political enemies, we are political opponents. If a conspiracy is being hatched to take someone’s life in this way, then this is wrong,” he said.

Mumbai, March 25: An FIR has been filed against Shiv Sena(UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray, Rhea Chakraborty, Dino Morea, Suraj Pancholi and others in Disha Salian’s death case, her father’s advocate said on Tuesday.

Satish Salian’s advocate Nilesh Ojha filed a fresh FIR in her death case. Ojha said that a written complaint has been filed with the police commissioner. In the FIR, the names of Aaditya Thackeray, Dino Morea and Suraj Pancholi have been mentioned.

According to Ojha, a written complaint to the police commissioner’s office was accepted by the joint commissioner of police (crime). The complaint is incorporated in the FIR. He further stated, “Aaditya Thackeray, Dino Morea, Suraj Pancholi and his bodyguard, Parambir Singh, Sachin Vaze and Rhea Chakraborty are all accused in the FIR.”

He claimed that Parambir Singh was the main mastermind for the coverup in the case. Ojha said, “Parambir Singh held a press conference and fabricated lies to save Aaditya Thackeray. NCB’s probe proves that Aaditya Thackeray was involved in a drug business and it has been also mentioned in the FIR.”

Ojha said that former Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and his associates hatched a conspiracy to suppress this serious crime. Some senior police officers were also involved in the conspiracy as they misused police and government machinery, created false police records, suppressed witnesses and tried to hide criminal evidence.

“It is my sincere request that all these acts should be immediately prosecuted under sections 376(D), 302, 409, 120(B), 107, 109, 166, 167 and other applicable sections of the IPC and strict action be taken against the accused,” said Ojha.

The move comes after Satish Salian recently filed a petition in the high court seeking a CBI probe into his daughter’s death. He had claimed that Disha was raped and murdered and he has named Aaditya Thackeray in the petition.

Disha Salian, who was a former manager of the late Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, died on June 8, 2020, after allegedly falling from the 14th floor of a highrise building in Mumbai. At the time, the Mumbai Police registered an Accidental Death Report (ADR). Six days later, Sushant Singh Rajput was found dead at his Bandra residence. While the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took over the actor’s death probe, an SIT (Special Investigation Team) was constituted by the Maharashtra government in 2023 to investigate Disha’s death.

Mumbai, March 25: Leader of the Opposition (LoP), in the Maharashtra Legislative Council, Ambadas Danve on Tuesday made a serious allegation that large scale betting was going on with the help of senior Mumbai Police officers during the ongoing IPL series.

During his speech on last week’s motion moved by the Opposition, LoP Ambadas Danve presented a pen drive to Council Chairman Ram Shinde.

“Those involved in betting include Mehul Jain, Kamlesh Jain and Hiren Jain. In addition, Pakistani players are being used by them for betting. After betting through an App called Lotus 24 in the recently-concluded Champions Trophy, all these people have now come to Mumbai for the IPL,” alleged Danve.

Danve criticised the Maharashtra government citing scams in the state’s transport undertaking, CIDCO, revenue, and health departments and also stated that there were corruption allegations against ministers and scams by officials.

He expressed his displeasure at the government’s working, saying that Maharashtra’s economic situation was heading towards an abyss.

Danve claimed that the state had not published the crime report of the last two years.

“About 564 various crimes have been registered in the state and riots have taken place. The graph of rape incidents has increased in Nagpur, Pune, Sambhajinagar. Nearly 22 rapes and 45 molestation incidents are happening every day. All these incidents are happening due to lack of fear of law,” Danve said.

Danve stated that prisons were overcrowded and added that there were 43,000 prisoners in various jails against the total capacity of 27,114 inmates.

He further claimed that there had been cases of fraud worth Rs 51,000 crore in the state. The rate of crime and cybercrime is increasing in the state and the cyber cell needs to be effective to prevent it, Danve said and cited various cases to argue that the law and order situation had deteriorated in Maharashtra.

“A man broke into the house of actor Saif Ali Khan and tried to rob and kill him. The accused in the murder of Beed Massajog Sarpanch is still absconding.

“The human rights commission’s report made it clear that Somnath Suryavanshi in Parbhani died due to beating by the police, but the government cannot take action against the people who beat Suryavanshi,” he claimed.

Danve also questioned what would be the plight of ordinary girls if Union Minister Raksha Khadse’s daughter was molested by some miscreants in Jalgaon.