On Thursday, the Bombay High Court asked the Mumbai Police to question senior IPS officer Rashmi Shukla at her residence in Hyderabad under Section 160 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) after Mumbai Police informed the High Court that it will not take any coercive action against the senior Maharashtra IPS officer or arrest her till the next date of hearing.
A bench comprising Justice SS Shinde and Manish Pitale heard an urgent plea by Rashmi Shukla who was apprehending arrest and coercive action in connection with an FIR registered by the Mumbai Police in the case of illegal phone tapping and alleged leaking of sensitive documents related to police postings. Shukla had approached the HC earlier this week, seeking for the case to be transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and also sought an interim order of no coercive action.
Rashmi Shukla, who is the Additional Director General of South Zone CRPF Hyderabad, had expressed her difficulty in the past, in a reply to a summons issued, to come down to Mumbai, due to the present pandemic. Seeking permission to send a team of police officials to question Shukla at her residence in Hyderabad, senior counsel Darius Khambata appearing for Mumbai Police also sought the court’s permission to video record her statement and further sought that apart from her lawyer nobody else be present. Shukla’s counsel, Mahesh Jethmalani, seeking interim protection from arrest said the IPS officer is willing to cooperate with the investigation and didn’t object to Khambata’s request.
The court accepted the statement and posted the plea for hearing in June. It also noted that the case pertains to offences under the Official Secrets Act, the Information Technology Act and the Indian Telegraph Act, which are punishable up to three years only.
“We will hear this petition after the summer vacation. Until then it will be graceful on the state government’s part to make a statement that it would not take any coercive action,” Justice Shinde said.
Before registration of the FIR, Maharashtra Chief Secretary Sitaram Kunte had alleged in a report submitted to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray that it appeared that Shukla herself had leaked the confidential report to Devendra Fadnavis.
An FIR was registered under the Official Secrets Act at the BKC cyber police station against unidentified persons for allegedly tapping phones illegally and leaking certain confidential documents on the complaint filed by the State Intelligence Department. The FIR also invoked Section 30 of the Indian Telegraph Act and Section 43(B) of the Information Technology Act.