Sheena Bora case and a miffed crime branch: Why Rakesh Maria was ousted as Mumbai's top cop

Rakesh Maria’s sudden and swift removal from the post of police commissioner of Mumbai under the guise of him being promoted to the post of the Director General of Home Guards, raised more questions than answers on Tuesday. But a key reason for the ouster seems to be Maria’s overzealous and overprotective investigation into the Sheena Bora murder case that has been making headlines for the past two weeks and which rubbed the Mumbai Crime Branch on the wrong side. According to sources, joint commissioner of police, Crime Branch, Atul Kulkarni, was miffed at being left out of what would have been a bread-and-butter case for his team. [caption id=“attachment_2426308” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Former Mumbai police commissioner Rakesh Maria. PTI[/caption] This disaffection in the crack investigation arm of the city police, apparently led Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to order a discreet enquiry by Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Bakshi. The Crime Branch expressed its surprise over the way the case was literally hijacked by the chief’s. In normal course, this case would have landed up in Kulkarni’s lap within a few days. This is done to keep the police stations free from the burden of intricate investigations so as to look after normal law and order duties. This convention was clearly violated in the Sheena Bora murder case. Instead, Maria took personal interest in interrogating the prime accused at the Khar police station thrice. Bakshi briefed the CM over the ongoing investigation in the Sheena Bora case and the day-to-day involvement of the police commissioner. Following the discreet enquiry, which need not have been discreet at all considering that Maria was making no bones of the fact that he had taken over this case, the chief minister chided Maria, in a roundabout way, of course, that he wished the police took such interest in solving all crimes. His exact words: “Police have shown a lot of involvement and attention in a case which is in the media spotlight. It should pay similar attention to other cases which do not get media focus,” Fadnavis had told the media. Such was the level of disappointment at the top echelons of the government that the Chief Minister decided to upgrade the post of Mumbai Police Commissioner to the rank of Director General from that of Additional Director General. This was necessary to bring in Ahmed Javed, already a DGP, to replace Maria, who himself was promoted to the rank of DG to facilitate his transfer to DG Home Guards. Through all this churn, Maria was unaware of the coming storm. He got to know only when the CM signed the orders, as reported by The Quint , just before leaving for Japan on Tuesday morning. Maria, had taken undue and acute interest in the Sheena Bora case, and had himself interrogated the accused including Indrani Mukerjea and Sanjeev Khanna, which was unusual. As NDTV report said, Maria was also regularly holding press conferences about the case despite not having given any interview since he was made Mumbai Police chief. Maria was anyway supposed to be promoted and sent out of Mumbai on September 30. Curtailing his term just 22 days before completion was a dead give-away that it had everything to do with the way he handled the Sheena Bora case. But having felled Maria in one quick sweep, there were some poor attempts at damage control. Late in the evening, Additional Secretary Bakshi said: “There was no hurry in transferring Maria. It would have been inappropriate to transfer him on 30 September, in the middle of the festive season as Ganapati festival, a very important event in Maharashtra would be on at that time. Therefore, we decided to advance the promotion of Maria,” he said. Not just poor, but also ridiculous when Bakshi said that Maria would continue to head the Sheena Bora probe irrespective of the transfer.