Earlier on March 4, the high court had granted protection from arrest till March 25 to Shukla in her plea seeking to quash an FIR lodged against her at the Bund Garden police station in Pune. (File) Senior IPS officer Rashmi Shukla recently approached the Bombay High Court after an FIR was filed against her in a case of alleged phone tapping at the Colaba Police station in Mumbai.
Earlier this week, Shukla filed a plea through advocate Sameer Nangre which claimed that the FIR was lodged with a political motive and she was falsely implicated in the matter.
Senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani mentioned Shukla’s plea before a division bench of Justice Prasanna B Varale and Justice Shriram M Modak on Thursday, which will be heard on Friday.
Additional Commissioner of Police (Special Branch) Rajiv Jain is the complainant in the case, in which Shukla is accused of tapping the phone calls of Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut and NCP’s Eknath Khadse.
The case has been registered earlier this month under Section 165 (public servant obtaining any valuable thing, without consideration, from a person concerned in any proceeding or business transacted by such public servant) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 26 of the Telegraph Act.
Earlier on March 4, the high court had granted protection from arrest till March 25 to Shukla in her plea seeking to quash an FIR lodged against her at the Bund Garden police station in Pune. The Pune FIR is in connection with the alleged illegal phone tapping of state Congress president Nana Patole during the tenure of the previous BJP-led government in Maharashtra.
The high court had “prima facie” observed delay in registering FIR and noted that the petitioner being a high-ranking officer holding responsible post required to be given interim protection. The court had also said that while the FIR was registered only against Shukla, other officers were involved in the process of obtaining sanction for surveillance for unearthing narcotics operations in Pune city.
On December 15, last year, the high court had rejected a plea by Shukla challenging the FIR lodged by Mumbai Police in March, last year under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) against unidentified persons for allegedly tapping phones and leaking confidential documents following a complaint by the State Intelligence Department (SID).
The court had, however, said that Shukla was entitled to protection and directed the police that an advance notice of seven working days be issued to the IPS officer in the event of any coercive steps being proposed to be taken against her.
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