MUMBAI’S KHAKI WARS
On September 27, when Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray learned that the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) had issued summons to two of his top officials—chief secretary Sitaram Kunte and acting DGP (director general of police) Sanjay Pandey—in connection with a case filed against former home minister Anil Deshmukh, Thackeray’s response, sources say, was, “Give them a befitting reply.” The reply arrived in two parts. First, Kunte and Pandey refused to honour the three summons, which asked them to appear on September 29, October 2 and October 11, apparently because it departed from protocol in which senior officers under inquiry are questioned in their own offices. They asked the CBI to send its investigators to their offices instead; the central agency chose to email them its questions.
The second part appeared on September 29, when the Maharashtra government revitalised a dormant case involving CBI director Subodh Jaiswal’s probe of the 2003 counterfeit stamp-paper scam. Jaiswal, who was heading the special investigation team tasked with probing the case in
