Mumbai: The Maharashtra Police questioned senior IPS officer Rashmi Shukla on Wednesday at the Colaba police station in the illegal phone tapping case. The IPS officer arrived at the police station around 12 noon and left after two hours of interrogation.
The Bombay High Court has restrained the Mumbai Police from taking any coercive steps against Shukla till April 1 while asking her to present herself before the police station for the questioning on March 16 and 23 for an FIR registered against her earlier this month under the Indian Telegraph Act and relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code.
The FIR was registered following a complaint by senior police officer Rajiv Jain, who accused Shukla of having put the phone numbers of Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Eknath Khadse under surveillance when she headed the state intelligence department (SID).
Earlier, a case of tapping the phone of Congress leader Nana Patole was registered at Bundgarden police station, Pune on the complaint of an Additional Commissioner of Police. The FIR alleges that the two leaders had their phones illegally tapped in June 2019 for nefarious political purposes. Shukla had filed a petition in the Bombay High Court seeking quashing of the FIR filed against her at the Bundgarden police station in Pune after she was found guilty by a committee appointed to probe the phone tapping case.
According to the Indian Telegraph Act, phone tapping is done for the purpose of national security or the prevention of major crime. However, police said that it was not clear why Shukla tapped the phones of the two leaders when there was no concrete reason. On Sunday, the Mumbai police had recorded the statement of senior BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis in the case of alleged illegal phone tapping and leaking of confidential documents.
(With agency inputs)
