Mumbai: Senior IPS officer Rashmi Shukla on Thursday became Maharashtra's first woman Director General of Police (DGP). The state home department issued the order for her appointment. The 59-year-old Indian Police Service officer of the 1988 batch was posted as director general of the Sashastra Seema Bal on deputation.
Mumbai police commissioner Vivek Phansalkar was holding additional charge as DGP Maharashtra after Rajnish Seth retired from the post on December 31, 2023. Shukla was embroiled in controversy during the previous Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government's tenure when she was named as an accused in phone tapping cases.
The Bombay High Court in September 2023 quashed two FIRs registered against Shukla in this connection. The two First Information Reports were registered in Pune and Colaba in south Mumbai for allegedly illegally tapping the phones of some opposition leaders when Devendra Fadnavis was chief minister of the state and Shukla headed the state intelligence department.
The Pune case was registered for allegedly recording phone calls of state Congress chief Nana Patole, while the Mumbai case was for allegedly recording phone calls of Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Eknath Khadse, who was earlier with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The FIRs came to be registered after Fadnavis, as leader of the opposition, cited a letter purportedly written by Shukla to the then-Maharashtra Director General of Police about alleged corruption in transfers in the police department. In the Pune FIR, the police had submitted a C-Summary report (the case is neither false nor true) and had sought to close the case, while in the Mumbai case, the government had refused to grant sanction to prosecute Shukla.
Fadnavis is now deputy chief minister and home minister.
