After reports of Maharashtra deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis’s wife Amruta registering an FIR against a designer came to light, the BJP leader spoke on it elaborately on the floor of the assembly.
He said that the woman in question, Aniksha Jaisinghani, is a designer who threatened his wife and who tried to bribe her as well.
Aniksha is the daughter of wanted bookie Anil Jaisinghani.
“She gained the trust of my wife. She knew her since 2015,” he said, narrating incidents through which Aniksha built trust with his spouse by lending her designer clothes, calling her for the release of the book she wrote on her mother.
He said the designer gained Amruta Fadnavis’s sympathy by telling her that she had lost her mother.
Fadnavis alleged the issue is related to Anil Jaisinghani, a bookie who has several cases registered against him and who has been absconding for several years now.
He told the House that the absconding bookie’s daughter secretly recorded their conversations, set a trap with a bag full of cash, and attempted to blackmail the Fadnavis family into helping her clear cases against her father.
“There was an attempt to trap me, but nothing came out of it. I had a hint that there is some conspiracy against my family too because some people used to tell me that there is an attempt to trap your family. But fortunately, in this case, all evidence is in my favour and has come to the fore,” he said.
He claimed that the daughter threw names of several top police officials in her conversations which were initiated to engage her to trap her without her knowledge.
“We will really have to think about which way we are heading in politics. I cannot say today whether this is political. Because it is a big question if one can trust a person who says they can switch sides and turn on other politicians if we help them. But there will be a thorough inquiry,” he added.
Fadnavis described “Jaisinghani’s daughter” as “very well educated and very intelligent”.
“She started telling my wife that she is a designer, she makes designer clothes and that she has started a business and that she makes artificial jewellery. She also said her name had appeared in a list of 50 most powerful women,” Fadnavis said in the assembly.
He said that the designer didn’t utter a word about her father until the change in government last year. Then she sought Amruta Fadnavis’s help in getting her father out of “false cases registered against him”.
“After some days she (Aniksha) started saying her father knows all the bookies and that they used to give the police information on these bookies, based on which raids would be held. She told us, if you help me a little bit, we can also conduct such raids. My wife did not take her seriously and told her that this is not our work and to not speak to her about such things,” Fadnavis said.
As per police information, Aniksha is a law graduate hailing from Ulhasnagar.
Her father has been booked for several cases about betting, threatening, cheating and misleading government officials. He has been absconding for years now.
The FIR filed by Amruta Fadnavis states that Aniksha met her several times before offering a bribe of Rs 1 crore to dismiss the police cases against her father.
Jaisinghani’s name came to light in an extortion case against former DCP of Mumbai crime branch Amar Jadhav, who, in 2009, had held the bookie’s wife and children hostage to force him to place bets on cricket matches. Jadhav was put on a leave of absence for six years, after which he took VRS and left the police force.
In the FIR, Amruta Fadnavis has mentioned that Aniksha had told her that she would provide information regarding bookies so that action could be taken.
After Amruta Fadnavis blocked her phone number, Aniksha allegedly sent her some recorded conversations and video clips from another number in an attempt to blackmail her.
Fadnavis later told reporters that when he made inquiries in the Mumbai Police, he found that under the former Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government — comprising the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and Congress — the police had started the procedure of scrapping the cases against Jaisinghani.
“In one video she is wearing a necklace, but the video is muted. In another, she is wearing a ring. But these items had been returned (to Aniksha). There was one very serious video. This woman, somewhere outside, is filling a bag with money. And then she sent another video where she is giving a similar bag to a woman who works with us. After I called the police, they decided to not make the FIR public saying it will be easier to trap and arrest Jaisinghani if the Fadnavis family keeps on engaging with Aniksha,” the deputy CM said. “We also conducted a frame-by-frame forensic audit of all the videos. It also shows the woman who was given the bag opening it. She was told these were clothes. The forensic report clearly shows the two bags are different.”
Many of these things are recorded, some are not, he added. “But whatever has been said has been entered into the police diary. This person (Jaisinghani) was almost going to be trapped,” he said.
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