‘Phone tapping’: Bombay HC quashes 2 FIRs against senior IPS officer Rashmi Shukla in Mumbai, Pune

After incumbent Director General of Police (DGP) retires on December 31, Shukla will be seniormost IPS officer in the state from the Maharashtra cadre. At present, she is posted as director-general of the Shasatra Seema Bal (SSB) on deputation.

A division bench of Justices Ajey S Gadkari and Sharmila Deshmukh quashed the proceedings in the Pune FIR in view of a closure report filed by the police. While the report is pending before a magistrate court, no protest petition has been filed against the same. In the case of Mumbai FIR, the government did not grant sanction for Shukla’s prosecution. Advocate General Birendra Saraf, for the government and Mumbai police, said there was no dispute about the rejection of the sanction by the principal secretary of the concerned department.

The State Intelligence Department (SID) data leak happened when the MVA was in power, leading to charges by ministers that their calls were intercepted illegally. Three separate FIRs related to data leak and call interception were filed by the state police — two in Mumbai and one in Pune.

The impugned FIRs were filed against Shukla in February and March last year. She was the SID chief during the Fadnavis-led government.

In her pleas, Shukla had said that she was being targeted by the then ruling alliance (MVA) for submitting a report disclosing the involvement of various political leaders in transfers and postings of police officers in the state. She was granted interim protection by the court from arrest in two of the cases.

The FIR filed at Pune’s Bund Garden police station was 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 Mumbai FIR was filed at Colaba police station for allegedly tapping the phone calls of Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut and NCP’s Eknath Khadse. In this FIR, the police filed a 750-page chargesheet against Shukla, stating that she, as the then SID chief, had sought permission from the then additional chief secretary (home) for tapping the phones of the two leaders by claiming that the phones belonged to two other individuals.

After the change in government, police claimed that they needed to get a sanction to prosecute Shukla. The current NDA government refused to grant this sanction. Meanwhile, in January, Shukla sought discharge from the case, stating that it could not go on against her without the said sanction.

In December, 2021, the high court disposed of a plea by Shukla challenging the FIR lodged by Mumbai Cyber Crime Police in March 2022 under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) against unidentified persons for allegedly tapping phones and leaking confidential documents following a complaint by the SID.

The high court, 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. In July 2022, the case was transferred from the cyber crime police to the CBI which submitted a closure report in May 2023, and it was accepted by the court last month.