Mumbai police ask Param Bir Singh to appear on Oct 12 in extortion case

The crime branch of Mumbai Police is probing an extortion case registered against Param Bir Singh in suburban Goregaon and wanted to question him, an official said.

Mumbai:Mumbai Police on Saturday pasted a notice outside the residence of IPS officer Param Bir Singh, asking him to appear before it in connection with an extortion case on October 12, an official said here.

Recently, Maharashtra Home Minister Dilip Walse-Patil had said that there were reports that Singh, a former Mumbai police commissioner who is now facing at least five criminal cases in the state, had left the country, but there was no confirmed information.

The crime branch of Mumbai Police is probing an extortion case registered against Singh in suburban Goregaon and wanted to question him, the official said.

A police team went to Singh's flat in the Nilima building in the Malabar Hill area and pasted a notice outside as he was not there, the official added.

The case was registered at Goregaon police station on the complaint of builder-cum-hotelier Bimal Agrawal. Besides Singh, dismissed police officer Sachin Waze, Sumit Singh alias Chintu, Alpesh Patel, Vinay Singh alias Babloo and Riyaz Bhati are named as accused in the FIR.

Param Bir Singh was shunted out as Mumbai police chief and transferred to the Home Guard after Sachin Waze's arrest in the case of an SUV with explosives found near industrialist Mukesh Ambani's south Mumbai residence.

Singh later accused then state home minister Anil Deshmukh of asking Waze to collect Rs 100 crore from hotels and bars in Mumbai every month, a charge which Deshmukh denied.

Subsequently, while Deshmukh resigned, police registered four cases of alleged extortion against Singh in Mumbai and Thane. Also, a case under SC-ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act is pending against him.

In the last few weeks the IPS officer has not been found at his residence in Mumbai or other known addresses including one in Chandigarh, police sources said.

PTI