IPS officer alleges BJP minister threatened her in scam probe, he denies charge

Maharashtra Cabinet minister and BJP leader Girish Mahajan has denied claims made by IPS officer Bhagyashri Navatake, who accused him of “coercion and threats” in an alleged Rs 1,200 crore scam related to the Jalgaon-based Bhaichand Hirachand Raisoni Credit Society from 2020 to 2022.
Reacting to the allegations made by the IPS officer, Mahajan said that neither he nor his wife had any financial involvement in the scam. “Police officers should focus on making decisions based on investigations, not political pressure. We have not taken a single rupee in loans or benefits,” the minister said, alleging that the case against him was an attempt to entrap him.
The allegations stem from an ongoing investigation into the Bhaichand Hirachand Raisoni (BHR) Multistate Cooperative Society, a credit society founded in 2007 with 264 branches. After the central government ordered its liquidation, accusations arose that BHR’s properties were auctioned off at suspiciously low prices, allegedly orchestrated by liquidator Jitendra Kandare.
Navatake, who led a Special Investigation Team (SIT) investigating the case while serving as Pune DCP (economic offence wing) in 2020-21, claimed that her efforts to expose corruption were obstructed. She asserted that during the investigation, nearly Rs 100 crore of depositors’ money was recovered, but political interference hindered further progress.
In her petition to the Bombay High Court, through her lawyer Manoj Nayak, Navatake alleged that she was targeted and scapegoated by influential people, including Mahajan and businessman Sunil Zawar, who she claimed benefited from the fraudulent activities surrounding the credit society’s liquidation.
The officer further claimed that after her transfer from Pune in late 2022, she was called by Mahajan and threatened to drop the investigation into Zawar and other accused individuals.
According to Navatake, Mahajan’s name had appeared in an interim forensic report as a beneficiary of the scheme, which allegedly provoked his threats.
The case got complicated after the political landscape shifted in Maharashtra in 2022 as the NDA government took power, resulting in key aspects of the investigation being transferred to the Crime Investigation Department (CID). However, legal challenges meant that only one of the three FIRs related to the case was transferred.
The FIR filed against Navatake accuses her of registering complaints with an “ulterior motive” and without the presence of complainants.
However, the IPS officer contended that these charges are ‘fabricated’ and that her “real crime was exposing high-profile political figures linked to the scam”.