Housing Minister demands apology from state critics

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and Minister of Housing Jitendra Awhad slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and critics for levelling allegations against the state and Maharashtra Police in the Sushant Singh Rajput death case. In a scathing tweet, he said, “In Sushant’s case, certain news channels, BJP leaders and critics have unnecessarily defamed Maharashtra and the state police force. Now, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has admitted that the actor committed suicide. Will the critics now tender an apology to the state and Maharashtra Police?”

The trigger was the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) panel report, which clearly said that SSR committed suicide and it was not murder. Awhad’s tweet comes a day after Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress attacked BJP and others for politicising the issue by maligning Maharashtra and the image of Maharashtra Police. NCP has demanded that an offence should be registered against those who indulged in defaming the Maha Vikas Aghadi government and the Mumbai Police in the case.

On the other hand, Congress party has called upon the state government to set up a special investigating team (SIT) to nab conspirators and their mastermind.

In a related development, former Mumbai Police Commissioner MN Singh said those who carried out a fake media trial in the case should tender an apology. He made a strong case for a regulatory authority to act against this. Singh, along with few retired Indian Police Service (IPS) officers, last month had filed petition in the Bombay High Court, saying that a section of TV channels has been trying to influence the course of investigation being carried out by central agencies, such as the CBI, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), and is running a false propaganda against the Mumbai Police.

The petitioners had submitted that the anchors of certain TV channels had been ‘running a vituperative 24×7 campaign against Mumbai Police’, which was likely to ‘erode public confidence’ in the institution. They had argued that the Mumbai Police was one of the oldest police forces of India and any malicious attempts to tarnish its reputation were ‘not in public interest’.