Quaid Najmi
MUMBI – As the beleaguered Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government of Maharashtra reels under the ‘letter-bomb’ posted by former Mumbai Commissioner of Police Param Bir Singh, it has emerged that the high profile IPS officer has strong ‘family ties’ with leaders close to Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.
Little known to many, the ace ex-Mumbai top cop’s son Rohan P. Singh is married with Rupali S. Meghe, the grand-daughter of a respected senior BJP politician from Nagpur, Dattatraya R. Meghe.
Rupali is the daughter of Sagar Meghe, also an ex-MLC of BJP plus an academician and businessman-turned-wannabe politician whose career failed to ignite after he lost the Lok Sabha elections from Wardha in 2014 as a Congress candidate.
Currently, Sagar Meghe is understood to have a setup in Dubai handling the overseas affairs of the reputed chain of educational institutions founded by his illustrious father – a 3-time Lok Sabha and one-time Rajya Sabha MP – Dattatraya R. Meghe, an ex-Minister in Maharashtra Cabinet, now 85.
After spending four decades and flourishing with the NCP and Congress, in 2014, the Meghes migrated to the BJP and one of Sagar’s siblings Sameer is now a BJP legislator from Hingna assembly seat.
Besides, Param Bir Singh also has another long-standing BJP buddy-link which, police officials claim, he loved to speak about in his long police career – he is said to be a college-friend of the pilot-turned-politico and former union minister, the BJP MP Rajiv Pratap Rudy.
Though Rudy hails from Bihar, he had studied at the DAV College in Chandigarh, where Param Bir Singh has his family roots, and the duo enjoys a great friendship going to the good ol’ days.
Param Bir Singh also has a very cordial connect with the legendary Satya Pal Singh, a former Commissioner of Police of Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur – who was dreaded by the infamous Mumbai mafia and ensured their activities were virtually paralysed in the 1980-1990s with his band of gun-toting ‘encounter specialists’.
Incidentally, a former union MoS, Satya Pal Singh once headed a Gujarat High Court appointed SIT to probe the fake encounter of a teenage girl Ishrat Jahan Raza, 19, of Mumbra, (Thane) and three of her friends in June 2004 by the Ahmedabad Police shooters claiming they were terrorists out to assassinate the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi, now the Prime Minister of India.
Last year, at the height of the TRP scam probe involving several television channels, Param Bir Singh’s spouse Savita shot into the limelight for being a corporate czarina in her own right.
Presently, as the MVA leaders allege, Param Bir Singh is the newest-found darling of the state BJP which is virtually working against a ‘next-month deadline’ to oust the Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party-Congress government led by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray.
Political sources speculate that with a race against time, the BJP hopes that ‘letter-bomb shell’ could probably dislodge the MVA as Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis gets mid-summer dreams about a third swearing-in ceremony.
(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at: [email protected])
