Incarcerated cop Sachin Waze was perceived as a blue-eyed boy of the top Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) leaders till his arrest in 2021. Today, he has changed sides by making statements that are advantageous to the incumbent Mahayuti alliance.
He has waded into the ongoing verbal duel between former home minister Anil Deshmukh and deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. Buoyed by the success in Lok Sabha polls, the MVA has adopted an aggressive posture against the Mahayuti in the run-up to the assembly elections. However, Sachin Waze has proved to be a raw nerve for the MVA.
Recently, Deshmukh targeted Fadnavis by alleging that before his arrest, a middleman approached him on behalf of Fadnavis and asked him to sign a few affidavits. As per Deshmukh, the affidavits had false allegations typed into them and were to be used for implicating the Shiv Sena leaders Uddhav Thackeray, Aditya Thackeray, Anil Parab, and NCP leader Ajit Pawar. After his refusal to sign, the central agencies started taking action against him and he was arrested. Although Fadnavis has refuted the allegations, a statement from Sachin Waze has come in handy for the Maharashtra BJP to hit back at Deshmukh.
While being taken to a hospital from jail for his health checkup, Waze told a TV news agency that Deshmukh pressurised him to extort Rs 100 crore from bar and hotel owners. As per Waze, he has written a letter to Fadnavis, giving all the evidence in the matter. He said that Deshmukh received money through his personal assistant. Waze is willing to take a narco-analysis test for the verification of his allegations.
Waze, an assistant police inspector of Mumbai Police, who remained suspended for sixteen years and joined Shiv Sena after being arrested in the custodial death of accused Khwaja Yunus, was suddenly reinstated in 2020 during the pandemic.
The MVA government, under the chief ministership of Uddhav Thackeray, did not just reinstate him but also appointed him as the head of the Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU). He reported directly to Police Commissioner Parambir Singh, bypassing other superior ranks.
All the high-profile cases in 2020-21, like the fake influencer case, TRP scam, and others were handed over to Waze. Interestingly, Waze was made the investigation officer of the Antilia case as well, in which he himself turned out to be an accused and has been charged with murdering a witness named Mansukh Hiren.
The timing of Waze’s statement has also raised eyebrows in the political corridors. The assembly elections are hardly three months away, and the mudslinging fest of politicians is at its peak, and in such a scenario, it is wondered whether Waze has entered into some quid-pro-quo deal. It will be interesting to observe how his legal case moves ahead in the coming days.
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