Deshmukh arrest, assets linked to Ajit Pawar attached action politically motivated, to scare MVA leaders, say ruling allies

Malik said that Ajit Pawar has no links with the properties attached by the income tax department and the motive behind this action is to defame him. “It is being said that the I-T department attached properties linked to Ajit Pawar. But there is no truth in it. The property belongs to everyone and they say that it belongs to Ajit Pawar. This is being done to defame him,” he added.

Malik claimed that the Union government should come clean and check the whereabouts of former Mumbai Police commissioner Param Bir Singh, who had accused Deshmukh of corruption.

The Shiv Sena, meanwhile, said that the Union government was targeting MVA leaders and was instrumental in allowing Param Bir Singh to disappear.

“Deshmukh’s arrest is unfortunate and also against the principle of justice. The man who has made the allegations against him has run away or should I say was made to run away. An officer of his rank can leave the country only with the active connivance of central agencies. He has disappeared with the help of central agencies,” Sena MP Sanjay Raut said.

He added that Deshmukh’s arrest was part of a larger conspiracy by the BJP, which was still shaken by its loss in Maharashtra, to target MVA leaders and destabilise the government.

The Congress, too, said that action against MVA leaders was part of BJP’s politics of vendetta. “Anil Deshmukh’s arrest is unfortunate. Param Bir Singh, who made the allegations, is yet to be arrested, but Anil Deshmukh, who is cooperating with the agencies, has been arrested. This is vindictive politics,’’ said Atul Londhe, chief spokesperson of the state Congress.

The family of Ajit Pawar, meanwhile, said they were not aware of the income tax department provisionally attaching assets. “No notice of any property attachment has been issued by the department to the Pawar family,” said a close aide of Parth Pawar, son of Ajit Pawar. “We only saw the news on TV. We have not been intimated about it by the department.”

NCP spokesperson Ankush Kakade, too, said: “We are not aware of it.”

Both Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and NCP president Sharad Pawar, who were in Baramati to inaugurate an incubation and innovation centre and scientific research institute set up under the Agricultural Development Trust of Baramati, maintained a studied silence on the events that had unfolded over the last 24 hours.