NIA is shielding Param Bir Singh in Sachin Waze case, NCP alleges

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Wednesday alleged that the NIA was protecting former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh in the 'Antilia bomb scare' case.

As per the National Investigation Agency's charge sheet in the case of SUV with explosives found near industrialist Mukesh Ambani's house 'Antilia', a cyber expert told it that Singh asked him to 'modify' a report during the initial probe. As per the NIA charge sheet, Singh paid (the expert) Rs five lakh to create bogus evidence," claimed NCP spokesperson and Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik here. "It was Singh who brought expelled Sachin Waze back into police force and gave him key cases. Still, Singh's name is not in the charge sheet," he told reporters. The NIA has arrested Waze and nine others in the case.

We always suspected that Singh was the mastermind of Antilia case. And Singh, on the instructions from the BJP, leveled allegations against then state home minister Anil Deshmukh to malign his image, Malik alleged. The Central probe agency "under the pressure of Union government" concealed several uncomfortable facts in its charge sheet, he claimed. After a vehicle with gelatin sticks was found near Mukesh Ambani's south Mumbai house on February 25, 2021, Deshmukh had made a statement in the Assembly based on information given by Singh, Malik said. The IPS officer "deliberately misled Deshmukh as well as chief minister Uddhav Thackeray," he alleged.

Param Bir Singh was shunted out from the post of Mumbai police commissioner after Waze was arrested in the case.

Singh then accused Deshmukh, an NCP leader, of corruption, leading to the latter resigning as home minister in April.

As per the NIA's charge sheet, a cyber expert (who had worked with Delhi Police) told Singh that a Telegram channel on which an outfit called Jaish-Ul Hind claimed responsibility for a blast outside Israel's embassy was found to be linked to a mobile number used from inside the Tihar jail. Singh allegedly asked him to write a similar report and insert a poster which had appeared on another Telegram channel where Jaish Ul Hind purportedly claimed responsibility for the Antilia bomb scare.

"Telegram channel (of) Jaish Ul Hind identified and resolved by me was different from the one on which the poster had appeared. The one resolved by me had only three to four members and there was no poster related to Antilia terror scare on that channel," as per the cyber expert's statement in the charge sheet.