Ex-Mumbai top cop Rakesh Maria says he's not planning to resign despite transfer

The post of director-general of police (home guards) appears to drive veteran IPS officers to contemplate resignation, and later claim that the thought never crossed their minds. That is, if the two most recent appointments are anything to go by.

Contemplating resignation?

Last year, it was Ahmed Javed who was considering quitting , and according to media reports on Tuesday, former commissioner of police Rakesh Maria is now making similar pronouncements. The Times of India reports that Maria does not appear to have taken his promotion to the rank of DGP too well.

The report quotes Maria as saying, “Yes, I’m thinking of resigning”, with the caveat that high-placed sources had indicated that tendering a resignation had been on his mind since being pulled up in July for a UK meeting with former cricket administrator Lalit Modi last year. On Wednesday, however, Maria told PTI that he was “not thinking of resigning,” adding that “Reports saying so are not true”.

Nevertheless, Maria’s promotion to the rank of DGP — around three weeks ahead of schedule — on Tuesday has raised suspicions in some circles of this being a motivated move. And at the centre of all speculation is the high-profile Sheena Bora murder case.

Sheena Bora murder case

Maria’s proximity to the case has been the subject of conjecture for a while, given his perceived special interest in the investigation. A personal connection with Indrani and Peter Mukerjea has also been implied in some quarters — an implication that Maria attempted to quash when he told The Times of India that he had “never met Indrani or Peter in my life. I saw Indrani for the first time at the Khar police lock-up and…  I first saw Peter only this Monday when I interrogated him”.

Shortly after Maria’s promotion, NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik told NDTV that “the transfer was done so as to stop investigations into the money laundering angle into INX Media, floated by Peter and Indrani Mukerjea, in which foreign companies from Singapore, UK and USA had invested about Rs 500 crore”.

Meanwhile, ABP News quoted Mumbai Congress Committee president Sanjay Nirupam as saying that “Maria was removed because of pressure from a big corporate house close to the party in power. There was no problem till Maria kept the investigations focused on the personal angle while protecting Peter. The problem arose when he mentioned the financial angle to the media on Monday night. That is when pressure built up to remove him."

Sure enough, it was on Monday night that the former commissioner of police addressed the media and announced that the police has now begun probing the financial angle. Following, which, as ABP News reported, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis ‘read him the riot act’. Maria had apparently visited Khar police station at night to examine the progress of the investigation, which was seen as ‘an act of defiance’.

A series of U-turns

As this episode has unfolded, Maria was not the only one to make a volte face — going as he did from ‘thinking’ of resigning, to ‘not thinking’ of resigning. The government order that confirmed Maria’s promotion indicated that he was to relinquish charge of the Sheena Bora murder case investigation at once.

In what appeared to be a call for a less hands-on approach to the investigation, Javed had been quoted by NDTV as saying , “The case should be handled properly, and evidence collected in such a way that it becomes a complete case when it is put up for trial”.

However, mere hours after Maria was shunted out, state home secretary KP Bakshi told PTI that Maria is to continue supervising the investigation ‘irrespective of his elevation and transfer’. But questions still remain:

But to what extent will Maria be able to supervise the operation under a new commissioner of police?

And just why did Fadnavis pull forward Maria’s promotion?

And considering he signed off on the order an hour before leaving for Japan, couldn’t it have waited until he was back?

Clearly, it’s not just the actual murder case alone that turns curiouser and curiouser by the day.