Speaking to journalists here on Thursday, Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) chief Manikrao Thakre giving a clean chit to Bagwe said that the Congress and himself were convinced that Bagwe was innocent.
“I have taken serious note of the campaign against the minister by some senior police officers, and have asked chief minister Ashok Chavan to issue a clarification on the issue and take stern action against them for going public and defaming Bagwe.
The spat between the minister and city police chief is being classified as a “political gang war”between the Congress and its alliance partner, the Nationalist Congress Party (Party) which controls the home department. However, on Thursday, Home Minister RR Patil in a surprise move after remaining silent on the issue, gave a statement in which he too gave a near clean chit to his junior minister, which may put the city police chief and a deputy commissioner of police in the dock.
Thakre said that he has written to Chavan in which he has mentioned that the smear campaign by the Pune police senior officers against Bagwe had only led to the tarnishing of the image of the Congress-NCP led Democratic Front government in Maharashtra.
“There is a minister Bagwe who is alleged to be facing 19 criminal cases and there are also some police officers who are defaming him publicly. Therefore it’s time that the government intervene and should fix the responsibility and take action against the police officers who are found guilty of tarnishing the image of the minister and government in public,” Thakre said in the letter.
The state Congress chief without naming the NCP said that he has apprehensions that the alliance partner was supporting the police officers and said that the state government should also find out if anyone had instigated the police officers to go at Bagwe and take deemed action against them too.
“Baqwe is unnecessarily being targeted. I have seen the legal documents and have found that out of the 19 cases, 16 cases were for political agitations, which were closed. In the remaining three are also of political nature and not serious criminal type and are pending. Hence, the smear campaign by the police against Bagwe came following Bagwe announcing in the recently concluded state legislature session that the Pune police commissioner Satya Pal Singh would be transferred out for failing to control crime and law and order situation in Pune.
