Mumbai: Joining the likes of former Mumbai top cops Satya Pal Singh and Arup Patnaik who jumped into electoral politics after retirement, former Mumbai Police chief Sanjay Pandey, who is keen on contesting the upcoming assembly polls, has joined the Congress.

The Bombay High Court had once called Pandey the “blue-eyed officer” of the previous Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, when he was the acting Maharashtra DGP, much before the Uddhav Thackeray-led administration put him at the helm of the Mumbai Police.

When the MVA was in power, Pandey was also seen as one of the pawns seemingly playing for the state in the proxy war that had broken out between the state government and the Narendra Modi-led Union government through their investigative agencies.

In July 2022, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Pandey in connection with its probe into the alleged tapping of phones of National Stock Exchange (NSE) employees. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which had booked the retired IPS officer in connection with its probe, arrested him in September that year. The Delhi High Court granted him bail in December, after he had spent nearly five months behind bars.

Pandey joined the Congress Thursday in the presence of Mumbai Congress president Varsha Gaikwad.

Speaking on the occasion, Pandey said, “I’ve been wanting to join the Congress since 2004. It’s not that I didn’t get opportunities, but the timing was perhaps right only now. While coming here I told people I am joining my family. I have a secular ideology and there’s no party other than Congress that fits that.”

He added, “Today, agencies such as ED and CBI are being used (against political rivals). As a retired police commissioner, I’ve experienced both these agencies. I would only like to say one thing to all citizens. There’s no need to be scared. Use however many agencies you like, we are standing here with the truth.”

Asked if the party is considering his candidature for the assembly polls, Congress leader Sachin Sawant told ThePrint, “The high command will take a call on candidates for the state assembly polls, but Sanjay Pandey will be a strong north Indian face of the party in Mumbai and Congress will use his capability for the election accordingly. He has always been known as an honest officer and was targeted with allegations only because of his impartiality.”

On the other hand, Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Pravin Darekar said Pandey’s induction in the Congress is perhaps the MVA’s way of rewarding the former cop for serving the alliance when it was in power. “When Sanjay Pandey was (Mumbai Police) commissioner, he was working for CM Uddhav Thackeray by harassing BJP leaders, registering offences against them and arresting them,” Darekar told reporters.

In July, Pandey, a retired IPS officer from the 1986 batch, had announced his intention to contest the assembly polls from Mumbai’s Versova constituency where he lives. He had said he is not actively seeking out any political party and plans to contest as an Independent.

Also Read: After delays & controversies, Mumbai’s costliest Metro inches close to launch, just in time for polls

‘Blue-eyed officer’ of the MVA

The Thackeray-led MVA government appointed Sanjay Pandey as Mumbai Police commissioner in February 2022, days after his stint as the state’s acting DGP ended on a controversial note.

The state did not have a full time DGP and Pandey was holding additional charge despite his name not being among the three recommended for the post by the UPSC panel, as is the norm for such appointments.

An advocate, Datta Shrirang Mane, filed a petition in the Bombay High Court questioning the inordinate delay in appointing a full-time DGP. This is when the court slammed the Thackeray-led government for favouring Pandey, calling him the “blue-eyed officer” of the MVA government. 

The MVA government then appointed Rajnish Seth, one of the three officers in the UPSC panel’s recommendations, as the Maharashtra DGP, in October 2023. Seth was about two years junior to Pandey.

After being relieved as acting DGP in February 2022, Pandey had in a Facebook post said an officer is used to being at the receiving end of bouquets and brickbats, “all with the same equanimity”.

“The only irony in present juncture is that in recent times, the system did work to undo some of the injustice done to my career record in the past,” Pandey said in his post.

While he was acting DGP, Pandey was instrumental in filing multiple FIRs against former Mumbai top cop Param Bir Singh, who had levelled draft allegations against Anil Deshmukh, home minister in the MVA government.

Singh was shunted out as Mumbai Police chief in March 2021 after the state government found alleged lapses in the probe into the recovery of explosives from outside industrialist Mukesh Ambani’s house, Antilia, in Mumbai in February 2021.

Sanjay Pandey was asked to conduct a preliminary probe against Singh. It was after his transfer that Singh dropped the ‘letter bomb’ in the inboxes of the Maharashtra Governor and the then chief minister Uddhav Thackeray making allegations against Deshmukh.

Singh later approached the CBI alleging that Pandey tried to offer him a settlement coercing him to withdraw his allegations against Deshmukh, an MLA with the then Sharad Pawar-led NCP. Pandey refuted the allegations.

ED & CBI case against Pandey

Pandey retired from the force as Mumbai Police chief on 30 June, 2022. Within a week of his retirement, the CBI booked him for allegedly tapping phones of NSE employees, after which the ED too registered a case and arrested Pandey on 19 July that year. 

The ED alleged that iSec, a company where Pandey was a former director and his mother is listed as the founder and one of the directors, illegally intercepted MTNL lines at the NSE between 2009 and 2017. It further alleged that the company and Pandey, on the NSE leadership’s direction, recorded calls of more than 100 employees and brokers.

Pandey’s lawyer had in 2022 told ThePrint that iSec was not monitoring any calls live, but was just “analysing the transcripts of the conversations” that the NSE had handed over to it. Pandey had stated before a trial court that he had handled many politically sensitive cases in his career and the proceedings against him are a “political fallout of honest and sincere discharge of his duties as a senior police officer”.

The Delhi High Court granted Pandey bail in December 2022.

Pandey, an IIT-Kanpur graduate, has had a chequered career. He had served as DCP in a zone that included Dharavi after the 1992-93 riots. During his stint as DCP, he once arrested late BJP leader Gopinath Munde for protesting at a police station.

Later in the decade, he went on central deputation and was part of the prime minister’s security unit in 1999.

At one point, Pandey resigned from the force and joined the private sector. 

However, when his resignation was not accepted for a year, he rejoined the force and soon got embroiled in a litigation against the state government, alleging he was kept on compulsory wait for over three years. When the MVA government made Pandey acting DGP, it was the first significant posting that the IPS officer had got in years.

(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)

Also Read: Mumbai needs 2.7L houses for all development, infra projects. How govt plans to build the stock