PUNE: Maharashtra Home Minister Jayant Patil denied that terrorists involved in the Mumbai attacks had made any demands. “As to the best of my knowledge and from the information received from the top brass of the Maharashtra police, none of the terrorists had made any demands,” Patil said while speaking to the media in his hometown Sangli on Sunday evening.
Refuting the statement of Congress party General Secretary Digvijay Singh, who reiterated it again yesterday in Indore, in which he alleged that the terrorists had made demands to release some ultras, Patil said that he was unaware on what basis did Singh make that statement, which had created furor in the country.
Singh said that he stood firmly by his statement which was based on media reports, and added that the federal government had turned down the demands put by the terrorists.
Patil also clarified that former Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and former Deputy Chief Minister and Home Minister R.R. Patil too had also stated that there were no demands from the terrorists. The statement from Singh coming after more than a month after the Mumbai attacks is surprising, he said.
In another development, the beleaguered state Director General of Police Anami Narayan Roy got a breather from the Bombay High Court on Sunday in “illegal” detention case of an Right to Information (RTI) activist Raj Awasthi. The Bandra court had ordered the registration of the case as Awasthi had alleged misconduct by Roy.
A High Court judge granted stay to Roy till Jan. 5 on an order by the magistrate of Bandra Metropolitan Court, which directed the Vakola police on Saturday to register a First Information Report (FIR) and file a criminal case against Roy. The High Court judge granted the breather to Roy and seven other police officers after the state government moved an application in the court against the order of the lower Bandra court.
