In what could snowball into a major issue, former high-profile IPS officer Rakesh Maria has made stunning disclosures, including an exchange of SMS with the then Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, on the sensational Sheena Bora murder case.
Maria (63) also spoke about two fellow officers - Deven Bharti and Ahmed Javed. Bharti was the then Additional Commissioner of Police in Mumbai Police Crime Branch and now an Additional Director General of Police heading the Anti-Terrorism Squad, while Javed replaced Maria as Mumbai Police commissioner and then became Indian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
Maria was Mumbai CP and personally investigating the case when he was promoted to the rank of Director General of Police and shunted out.
In his memoirs - 'Let Me Say It Now' - Maria, who had handled cases like 1993 serial blasts and the 26/11 probe, speaks in detail about the investigations involving Sheena Bora murder case.
Maria said that he was kept in the dark by Deven Bharti, who was the then Joint Commissioner of Police (law and order). Maria said that Deven did not tell him about knowing Peter and Indrani Mukerjea.
"That night I could not sleep a wink," Maria writes. All this happened on September 7, 2015, and the next day, he was transferred.
Maria writes that Javed knew the "Mukerjeas" (Peter and Indrani, now divorced) socially and were invitees to his Eid party. "Did the CM and the (then) Additional Chief Secretary (KP Bakshi) know about this before the new CP (Javed) took charge?" he writes.
He also points out that when Rahul (son of Peter) was trying to lodge a missing complaint about Sheena, Bharti was additional CP of Crime Branch and Javed, the additional DG (law & order).
Maria also wrote about the then CM's interview to TV channels that suggested he (Maria) was misleading him and that gave Peter a clean chit. "I never told him that Peter was not under our scanner," he states.
He also shared his SMS to Fadnavis, in which he wrote: "....I along with my team had this detection for only 12 days before I was.promoted and transferred. Peter Mukerjea's role and financial transactions were being parallelly probed in the case. The CBI took 90 days to bring out Peter Mukerjea's role and then arrest him!! This is sad, unfair and unjust to me and the Mumbai police team which detected this buried case....".