Anil Deshmukh released from jail

Former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh was released on bail from Arthur Road prison in Mumbai around 5 pm on December 28.

The development comes after the Bombay High Court declined to extend its stay on a bail order issued in a corruption case filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

The 73-year-old Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader was behind bars since November 2021, when the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested him in an alleged money laundering case.

“I have full faith in the judiciary....the high court has observed that I was implicated in a false case,” Deshmukh said, after Ajit Pawar and other NCP leaders welcomed him outside the jail.

Recently, Justice M S Karnik had granted bail to Deshmukh on December 12, but put the order on hold for ten days as the CBI requested some time to challenge the order in the Apex Court.

The central agency moved the Supreme Court but the appeal would be heard only in January 2023 as the court is closed for vacation.

While granting bail order to the NCP leader, the Bombay High Court noted that except for dismissed police officer Sachin Waze's statement, no statement recorded by the agency indicated that money was being extorted from bar owners in Mumbai at the behest of the NCP leader

In November, a special CBI court had rejected his bail plea, after which the lawyer of Anil Deshmukh submitted the bail plea in the high court. The NCP leader requested bail on both medical and merits grounds. 

In March 2021, former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh alleged that Deshmukh had given a target to police officers to collect Rs 100 crore per month from restaurants and bars in Mumbai.

The same allegations were levelled by former assistant police inspector Waze, who was arrested in connection with the death threat case to industrialist Mukesh Ambani in which an explosives-laden car was found near Ambani's residence in Mumbai last year.

The high court in April 2021 directed the CBI to carry out a preliminary inquiry.Based on this inquiry, the CBI registered an FIR against Deshmukh and others for alleged corruption and misuse of official powers.