'Mumbai police chief ordered to put me in jail by...': Maharashtra Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis' claim

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on 24 January 2023 accused a former police chief of Mumbai and the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance of conspiring to put him in jail.

Speaking at an ABP Majha event, Fadnavis said that when Sanjay Pandey was Mumbai police commissioner, he had been told by the then government to frame the BJP leader and slap criminal charges against him.

Fadnavis said that his opponents failed as he had done "nothing wrong" that could be used to imprison him.

The BJP leader also said that he does not hold any personal animosity against Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray, who was the chief minister with the support of the Congress and NCP. “Uddhav Thackeray completely stopped answering my phone calls. If he did not want to form an alliance (with BJP after 2019 state polls), he should have told me so,” he said.

“At a function recently, I met ‘wahini’ (Uddhav’s wife Rashmi Thackeray) and told her to convey my regards to Uddhav Thackeray. This is the culture of Maharashtra and I cannot disregard it,” he said.

Soon after the fall of the MVA government, Pandey, a 1986-batch retired Indian Police Officer, was arrested in connection with a money laundering case linked to the alleged illegal phone tapping of NSE employees. He is currently out on bail.

(With PTI inputs)