Akela
AKHILESH Singh, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Zone-7 has a bright future in Mumbai police department. However, if for some reasons, things don’t work out for him in the police department; he will certainly have an excellent future in Bollywood, both as an actor as well as a scriptwriter. His recent incident manipulation of events to suit his pre-conceived and fictitious narrative are a testimony to this.
Brief facts of the incident:
On June 4, 2018 around 6.00 PM, ABI reporter Ranjit Mahanti went to NCH Colony, Kanjur Marg (West), to cover a story related to death of a construction worker Pushpraj Surendra by electrocution at a construction site within the NCH Colony. As he was entering the colony, the security personnel there started a completely unilateral and unprovoked altercation with him about an entry pass and started misbehaving with him. As they heard that his name was Ranjit Mahanti and organization name ABI they said, “accha to tu hi hai Ranjit Mahanti. Ma…ch..d tujhe to hum khoj rahe the.” They then became very angry and agitated and security incharge Suresh Awasthi, Subhash Yadav, Vinod Pandey and Pabbi dragged him to security office, locked in the room, confiscated his mobile phone, footwear and identity card, abused and beat him severely. Coincidentally and luckily for Ranjit Mahanti, there was an eyewitness Purushottam Singh who witnessed this incident and called on police helpline number 100 and a policeman rescued him. Mahanti rushed to Parksite police station to register FIR against security guards but he forgot that in a police station in Mumbai, getting an FIR registered is harder than winning a gold medal in Olympics. He persuaded, requested, begged and pleaded the police personnel on duty to register his FIR. But this was to no avail. Late at night, after extreme pressure from Mahanti, the police finally registered an NC against the security guards of the colony. However, shockingly, yet completely living upto their reputation and as per tradition, the Mumbai police also registered a cross complaint on behalf of the Naval Security Guards against Ranjit Mahanti. Mahanti’s request to confiscate the CCTV of the security complex at the time of the incident was also not paid heed to and the police ignored it. Ranjit Mahanti was perhaps too idealistic and he decided to follow Gandhian principles of Satyagraha and sat on a hunger strike at the police station for over 30 hours, to pressurize the police officials to rightfully register a FIR against the Naval Security Guards. He even was updating his status on Facebook Live. Watching this, some of the well-wishers and other journalists also called on the police officials and DCP Akhilesh Singh to personally look into the matter and register a FIR in this matter.
Instead of paying any heed to Mahanti during his hunger strike, the officials at the police station made fun of him and exhibited their callous attitude. Finally, Mahanti sent out a written complaint to several senior authorities, demanding action against DCP Akhilesh Singh, ACP Shekhar Tawade, Senior Inspector Vilas Jadhav and PSI Akash Patil as they failed to register FIR and thus committed dereliction of duty. In a bizarre twist to this whole event, on instruction of DCP Akhilesh Singh, Parksite police station after six days on June 10, 2018 registered a fake FIR against ABI reporter Ranjit Mahanti under sections 353, 504 and 506 of IPC. This was a twist that no one indeed saw coming, and such a twist would put master story tellers and script writers to shame.
Further, what is strange is that on June 4 and 5, several journalists called on DCP Akhilesh Singh, requesting him to register a FIR against Naval Security Personnel. Akhilesh Singh, despite not conducting any investigations, told all the journalists that there was just an altercation with Mahanti and there was no illegal confinement or abuse and hence FIR could not be registered against the Naval Security Personnel and hence only an NC could be registered. Strangely, when he was later on called by the state home minister Ranjit Patil, to get an update on this incident, Akhilesh Singh blatantly lied and concocted a false story that he had no idea about this incident at all. He promised Ranjit Patil that he would find out more details about this incident and then revert. So, it is evident from above that Akhilesh Singh is a master of manipulating facts and telling stories.
DCP Akhilesh Singh will be in future take on higher responsibilities within the Mumbai police. He will be promoted to Additional Commissioner, Joint Commissioner and may be even Police Commissioner. While ABI always wishes best for all police officials, the future of Mumbai police under an actor and Master Story Teller Akhilesh Singh is scary and bleak for journalists.