From khaki to khadi: Ex-inspector wins, 3 others bite the dust

Former police inspector Rajesh Padvi, who had resigned from service to join politics and secured a ticket from the BJP for the Maharashtra Assembly polls, emerged a winner on Thursday, while three other retired police officials, who were also in the poll fray, lost.

Among the retired police officials who lost elections was former 'encounter specialist' Pradeep Sharma.

Padvi, whose last posting was at the suburban Andheri Police Station, had resigned from the police service just a few days before the October 21 elections.

He contested the assembly elections from Shahada in his home district of Nandurbar in North Maharashtra as the BJP nominee.

The former police officer defeated Congress candidate Padmakar Valvi, his nearest rival, by a margin of over 7,000 votes.

In the 2014 assembly elections, Rajesh Padvi's father, Udesing Padvi, had won from Shahada on a BJP ticket and defeated Valvi by a narrow margin of 719 votes.

Rajesh Kale, senior inspector at the Andheri Police Station under whom Padvi had served before he resigned to join electoral politics, expressed happiness over his former deputy becoming a lawmaker.

"Though we worked together for a brief period, he was a good police officer", he said.

Ninad Sawant, senior police inspector of Crime Branch Unit-4 and Padvi's batchmate, is also happy for the newly- elected MLA with whom he shares a long association.

Both were police officers of the 1993 batch and had also studied law together.

Sawant and Padvi are friends since their college days.

Padvi was a student of Kirti College in Dadar, whereas Sawant attended MD College in Parel - both institutions are located in Central Mumbai.

"We all batch mates are happy with our colleague's success in politics," said Sawant.

Sawant also remembered their days at the Nashik-based Maharashtra Police Academy, where they underwent training after clearing written exams conducted by the state public service commission.

"He is a very good human being and also has good (crime) detection qualities," said Sawant.

"We expect him to contribute in development of his constituency and fulfil aspirations of his people," Sawant said.

Padvi, who served in the force for over two decades, was mostly posted in various police stations in Mumbai and also had a stint in Crime Branch, an elite investigation unit.

He was also posted in Nagpur city in 2011.

In his career, Padvi solved several important cases one of which was a job racket which he busted by arresting eight persons. Hundreds of people were victims of the job racket.

During his posting in Nagpur, Padvi had cracked the Monika Karnapure murder case.

However, Padvi was booked by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in 2009 in an alleged case of bribe when he was posted in Mumbai's Oshiwara Police Station. However, the case did not make much headway.

Besides Sharma, who bit the dust from Nalasopara, a distant suburb of Mumbai, two other retired police officials, Samsherkhan Pathan and Gautam Gaikwad, also lost.

Sharma, the Shiv Sena candidate from Nalasopara, lost by 34,000 votes to Bahujan Vikas Aghadi candidate Kshitij Thakur, who retained the seat.

Pathan, a retired ACP, lost in Mumbadevi where he was the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) candidate.

Gaikwad, a retired police inspector, was defeated in Worli, where he was the VBA nominee. Shiv Sena youth leader Aaditya Thackeray won from Worli in central Mumbai.