Political phone-snooping case: Bombay HC quashes FIRs against woman IPS officer

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Friday quashed two FIRs registered against senior woman IPS officer Rashmi Shukla for allegedly ordering illegal tapping of politicians’ telephones between 2015-2019.

A division bench of Justice A. S. Gadkari and Justice Sharmila Deshmukh set aside the FIRs – one in Mumbai and another in Pune - after Advocate-General Birendra Saraf informed the court that the Mumbai Police was not given the sanction to prosecute Shukla under the CrPC's Section 197.

Shukla had filed the petition seeking to quash the FIRs filed in the Colaba Police Station in Mumbai and Bund Garden Police Station in Pune, for similar offences.

The first (Mumbai) FIR pertained to the alleged phone-snooping of Shiv Sena-UBT leader Sanjay Raut and Nationalist Congress Party’s Eknath Khadse. The second (Pune) FIR – which the Pune police filed its closure report - was in regard to the phone-tapping of state Congress President Nana Patole, allegedly perpetrated when the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government was in power in the state.

Patole had lodged a complaint alleging that his phone was under surveillance during 2016-2017 under the pretext that it belonged to narcotics smuggler Amjad Khan. The Congress leader had also alleged that the phones of the then BJP MP Sanjay Kakade, Union Minister Raosaheb Danve’s PA and other political personalities were also tapped.

Shukla had claimed that she had merely granted approval for surveillance to detect drug activities in Pune and that the FIR was lodged after three years. Though multiple officers were involved in these surveillance processes, no FIRs were filed against them, she was being "falsely implicated" and was a victim of political vendetta, she contended.

Following the allegations which created a huge political outcry then, the state government set up a 3-member probe committee headed by the then Director-General of Police Sanjay Pandey.

In December 2021, the Bombay High Court had declined to quash another FIR lodged by the Mumbai Police against unknown persons for ‘leaking’ a confidential report prepared by Shukla on the phone-tapping. The court had directed the police to give a week’s notice if they planned to make the woman IPS officer an accused in the case.