Maha ex-DGP records statement with Thane Police in extortion case

Thane (Maharashtra) (The Uttam Hindu): Maharashtra’s ex-Director General of Police and former Commissioner of Police Sanjay Pandey appeared before the Thane Police to record his statement in connection with an extortion case lodged against him and others in August, here on Wednesday. Based on a complaint by a Mumbai businessman Sanjay Punamiya, the Thane Nagar Police Station had registered the case which is being investigated by the Crime Branch Unit 5, based in Wagle Estate.

After recording his statement for around three hours, Pandey – who had been granted protection against arrest till January 3, 2025, by the Bombay High Court in October 2024 – was allowed to go. Two FIRs were also registered against Punamiya during the former Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) regime when Pandey served in the two top posts in the state police. Later, the cases against Punamiya were taken over by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). After its probe, the central agency filed its closure report in the case in which another former senior Mumbai police officer was named as an accused. As per Punamiya’s complaint, Pandey had allegedly misused his position by ordering an illegal probe against him in a 2016 case pending with the Thane Nagar Police Station, extorted money from him and other businessmen by threatening to implicate them in false cases, making fake documents, etc, between May 2021-June 2024.

Punamiya claimed that Pandey and others offered to let him off the hook if he gave statements implicating a couple of prominent (then) Opposition leaders in certain land deal cases, but the former flatly refused to oblige. Others who were booked in the same case were a business rival of Punamiya and Mumbai realtor Shyamsundar Agrawal, a couple of his relatives Shubham Agrawal and Sharad Agrawal, lawyer Shekhar Jagtap and two cops -- Inspector Manoj Patil and former Assistant Commissioner of Police Sardar Patil. The controversial Pandey, a 1986 IPS officer who retired as Mumbai CP in June 2022, has previously had a brush with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in an alleged money-laundering case which arrested him in a CBI case pertaining to his business entity, iSEC Services Pvt Ltd, for various alleged shady activities.