On Tuesday evening, Mumbai’s top cop Rakesh Maria was shunted out, though the move has been termed a ‘promotion’.
So why did Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis decide to move the Mumbai Police Commissioner and ask him to swap posts with Ahmed Javed, the DG of Home Guards?
Many theories are floating around, but the media’s most favorite theory seems to be that Maria’s unhealthy interest in the Sheena Bora murder case angered Fadnavis.
Here is a look at various reports:
The Times of India says that the ‘talk in the corridors of power is that Maria's fate was sealed after Fadnavis criticized him for focusing on high-profile crimes at the cost of other cases.’
Mumbai Mirror has listed out many reasons that lead to the move. The paper says it had ‘learnt the real cause was Maria’s refusal to heed a hint from Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to back off and let the Crime Branch handle the Sheena Bora investigation.’
Mirror says that being a Congress-NCP nominee, Maria had an uneasy relationship with the government. Clearing Shiv Sena leader Aditya Thackeray’s brainchild night-life policy for Mumbai city without informing CM, pictures with Lalit Modi and the row over stopping traffic for CM’s visit to the National Sports Club of India at Worli added to the friction.
According to New Indian Express, Devendra Fadnavis made a Muslim, Ahmed Javed, chief of Mumbai Police, because he wanted to pacify the city’s Muslims
TNIE suggests that an influential media person approached Fadnavis and wanted the Mumbai police to keep its hands off the money trail in the Indrani Mukerjea case. ‘It would have been embarrassing for Fadnavis to ask Maria to keep off from investigating the money trail’, says the paper.
The Mid Day based out of Mumbai says that the transfer was due to many reasons (Sheena Bora and night-life rule), but the most important of these was Fadnavis’s wish to send out a message, especially to the police force, not to mistake him as soft.
Exactly opposite to what TNIE reported, Times Now and The Quint said that ‘Maria steered clear from investigating several key elements of the case, including the personal angle, which along with the financial factor, could have revealed the real motive of Sheena’s murderers,’ and that lead to his transfer.
FirstPost was of the opinion that Rakesh Maria had invited the transfer with his indiscreet ways.
‘Maria’s evinced deep personal interest in the Sheena Bora murder case like we have not seen the boss of any other metropolitan police force do in any other part of the country in recent memory. His proximity to Peter Mukherjea and his family is well known in the media circles, especially Page 3 circles’, said the website.