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The Supreme Court on Friday, 1 April, junked a plea by Maharashtra government seeking direction to hand over the probe against former Home Minister Anil Deshmukh from the CBI to the special investigation team (SIT).
A bench headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul said, "sorry dismissed!"
Senior advocate CA Sundaram, representing the Maharashtra government, submitted before the bench that the state government objected to the ongoing CBI probe against Deshmukh, with Subodh Kumar Jaiswal as the CBI director.
Sundaram vehemently argued that Jaiswal was the former DGP of Maharashtra and also chairman of the police establishment board at the relevant time, which examined the transfer and posting of the police officers concerned.
Sundaram said the present CBI chief will either be possibly an accused or definitely a witness. "I am not going into likelihood of bias, a person who is relevant as a witness or an accused, he was directly involved," he said.
In April last year, the CBI registered a case against Deshmukh and others under Section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption Act and Section 120B of the Indian Penal Code.
Deshmukh, a senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader, is under investigation on allegations of bribe-taking for police transfers and postings, during his period as the home minister.
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