Minister extortion case: Accused woman’s associates in touch with NCP-SP leaders, says Maha CM

Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday informed the state Assembly that the associates of an accused woman, who tried to extort money from Rural Development Minister Jaykumar Gore, were in direct contact with NCP SP leaders Supriya Sule and Rohit Pawar.

The Chief Minister said that the woman has already been arrested by laying a trap, and the police are currently investigating the case.

In his reply to a debate on the motion moved by opposition parties, the Chief Minister said that calls made between the associates of the accused woman with Supriya Sule and Rohit Pawar have been recorded.

“If politics is being done with the intention of removing someone from life, it is not right. The case regarding Gore was registered in 2016, it ended in 2019. He was not even in the ruling party at that time. But then suddenly, this case was revived,” said the Chief Minister.

“I appreciate his (minister’s) courage. A person tries to settle things in such a situation, but he complained after being demanded a bribe from an accused woman. The entire conversation was recorded. There are many clips of the conversation. After the Police Department was convinced, they set a trap. The accused woman was caught while actually taking the cash. Therefore, it was a form of blackmail,” said the Chief Minister.

The Chief Minister hinted at a nexus that was working in this case. “It was a kind of nexus. Three accused in this case have been arrested. One is the woman herself. The second is journalist Tushar Kharat, while the third is a person named Anil Subhedar. All of them had hatched this conspiracy together. All the evidence of this has been found. Their WhatsApp conversations have been found. About 150 of their phones have been found. How they hatched the conspiracy has come to light. But the unfortunate thing is that the Nationalist Congress Party was directly in touch with all of them,” he said.

The Chief Minister said that Prabhakar Deshmukh has spoken to these three accused 100 times directly, adding that the videos have been sent to them.

“They have also responded. But what I feel worse is that Supriya Sule and Rohit Pawar have made calls to Tushar Kharat, who runs a YouTube channel. The videos of Jayakumar Gore have been sent to Sule and Pawar by the accused. It will be investigated. But why is this happening? We are not political enemies, we are political opponents. If a conspiracy is being hatched to take someone’s life in this way, then this is wrong,” he said.

--IANS

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