MUMBAI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officers interrogating the senior Nationalist Congress Party leader Padmasinh Patil, who is a member of Parliament and former Maharashtra home minister, and is now an accused in the murder of his cousin and Congress party leader Pawan Raje Nimbalkar, said that the accused is a "hard nut" to crack and is leveling charges against the investigating agencies to stall his interrogation, including the narcoanalysis test.
Two days ago, the CBI had raided two houses of Patil in Colaba suburb in south Mumbai and seized a large quantity of arms and ammunition as well as incriminating documents. The CBI has sealed the homes. Patil's lawyer claimed that the seized weapons were licensed.
A CBI team led by Western Region Joint Director Rishi Raj Singh, on Thursday night had raided the two houses of Patil, which yielded a rich haul of arms, ammunition, unaccounted cash of 52 lakh rupees, and fixed deposit receipts of six crore rupees, incriminating documents, 10 Very High Frequency (VHF) walkie-talkie sets, computers and CDs.
The CBI joint director said that the recovery of VHF sets is mind-boggling as these are used only by the security forces and are prohibited to be used by the public, unless a special permission is received from the federal government. We would investigate as to how the accused obtained this prohibited sets and for what purposes, he said.
Among the weapons seized were two rifles, one revolver, one pistol, shot guns, three swords and large quantity of ammunition. A police official said that Padmasinh has 11 firearms licenses in his name. "The licenses have been obtained form different places including Mumbai. It will be verified whether the firearms recovered from his Colaba residence in south Mumbai are licensed or not. The firearms would be sent for forensic tests to find out when it was last used and if the cartridges in it are the same as those used to gun down Nimbalkar," the official said.
The incriminating documents seized by the CBI pertain to a multimillion-rupee fraud involving the Terna sugar factory, which Patil partly owns. Patil's lawyer Bhushan Mahadik on Friday told journalists, "The arms and ammunition seized from the house of Patil were licensed and purchased following necessary provisions of the law. It was reported in some sections of media that 52 swords were recovered. But the fact is that only three swords were seized. These are those ones, which were presented to him as mementos," he said.
He said that the mention of unaccounted cash worth Rs.52 lakhs was false. "The money belongs to Patil's family and the Income Tax Department has a record of this amount. Also, certain documents seized belonged to the Terna Charitable Trust, while those related to the Justice Sawant Commission were public document," he said.
