Mumbai/Nagpur: Maharashtra Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse on Sunday virtually got a clean chit from the police who said no calls were made from or received on his phone from underworld don Dawood Ibrahim’s number as claimed by the Aam Aadmi Party even as Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis termed the charge against his colleague “unsubstantiated.”
“Our initial analysis of the cellphone number (belonging to Khadse) indicated that there were neither outgoing nor incoming calls from this number to that of the fugitive (Dawood) during the entire period of September 2015 to April 2016, as stated in the (AAP) press conference,” Mumbai Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Atulchandra Kulkarni said.
AAP spokesperson Preeti Sharma Menon on Saturday alleged that the Minister had received several calls from Dawood’s wife Mehjabeen Shaikh’s number 021-35871639 between September 4, 2015 and April 5, 2016.
She further claimed that the Chief Minister had asked the police to investigate the matter. Khadse had dismissed the allegations as “baseless” stating that the particular number was not in use for the last one year.
Kulkarni said: “When the issue of contact of the Maharashtra Minister with the Mumbai underworld fugitive Dawood Ibrahim, who is abroad, cropped up, we checked the details.”
“The report of ATS chief is clear. There are neither incoming nor outgoing international calls from the cell number of Eknath Khadse. It is not proper to target a senior Minister without substantiated evidence,” Fadnavis said.
