Senior Police Inspector Pradeep Sharma, head of the Anti Extortion Cell of Thane Police Crime Branch, has resigned. Sources said he tendered his resignation to the Director General of Police, Maharashtra, earlier this month.
Confirming the development, Mr. Sharma told The Hindu , “I have taken the decision due to personal reasons.”
However, speculation was rife that Mr. Sharma is preparing to enter politics. Sources said he would contest the Assembly elections from the western suburbs for a leading political party.
Controversies have dogged Mr. Sharma in his long and eventful career. After a string of successful encounters — 111 in all — between the late 1980s and early 2000, when the Mumbai Police waged a war against the criminal underworld, Mr. Sharma found himself in the dock in 2006 for the alleged fake encounter of Ramnarayan Gupta alias Lakhan Bhaiya, a suspected Chhota Rajan aide. Mr. Sharma was dismissed from service in 2008, arrested in 2009 after a lengthy inquiry along with 13 other policemen, spent four years in Thane Central Jail before being acquitted in 2013.
He was reinstated in 2017 and given charge of Thane AEC, following which he made two major arrests, the first being Iqbal Kaskar, brother of wanted terrorist Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, on extortion charges. The second was Sonu Jalan, a top bookie with alleged underworld connections. Many big names, including film personalities, came under the scanner during subsequent inquiries.
