Crime branch sources said the 1,895 page long charge-sheet against Singh and others contains statements of dozens of witnesses and it was filed before the Esplanade metropolitan magistrate court
Mumbai crime branch on Saturday filed charge-sheet against former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh, dismissed assistant police inspector (API) Sachin Vaze and two others in an extortion case filed by a hotelier. This is the first charge-sheet filed against Singh, who faces total five FIRs in Mumbai and Thane.
“We have collected evidence and recorded statements of many witnesses to establish how Singh and Vaze were running an extortion racket,” said special public prosecutor Shekhar Jagtap. Singh had recorded his statement in the case last week.
Crime branch sources said the 1,895 page long charge-sheet against Singh and others contains statements of dozens of witnesses and it was filed before the Esplanade metropolitan magistrate court. Vaze was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on March 13, in Antilia explosives scare case and the connected murder of Thane trader Mansukh Hiran.
The Goregaon police had, on August 25, registered an extortion case against Singh, Vaze and others on the complaint by hotelier Bimal Agarwal, alleging that the accused extorted ₹11.92 lakh from him by threatening to register cases against two of the bars he operated in partnership.The offence had taken place between January 2020 and March 2021, police had earlier said. Later, the case was transferred to Unit 11 of the crime branch for investigation.
Besides Singh and Vaze, others charge-sheeted in the case include Alpesh Patel and Sumit Singh alias Chintu. while Vaze is in judicial custody, Patel and Sumit Singh are out on bail. Police are yet to file a charge-sheet against two more accused in the case – Vinay Singh and Riyaz Bhati.
Singh, who was in hiding for months, showed up before the crime branch investigators early this week after the Supreme Court granted him protection from arrest.
