THACKERAYS IN THE CROSSHAIRS

Anger flowed in rather rich metaphors in the Maharashtra assembly on March 25. “Put me in jail. I am not Krishna, but can you say that you are not Kansa?” a visibly agitated Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray told the somewhat stunned gathering of legislators. “If you want to come to power, do that. But don’t do all these vicious things to come to power,” he added. It was a rare emotional outburst for a normally sedate politician. What makes Uddhav so angry? His own words contained the clue: graft charges, hovering over his people like an ominous cloud.

- Kiran D. Tare

Three days before his speech, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had come knocking on the Thackeray family door, so to speak, something almost unthinkable in another time. But it has been a decade since Bal Thackeray’s demise, and after the Shiv Sena parted ways with the BJP in 2019, conf lict is now the default state. It’s now taking an institutio nal shape: ED sorties on a vulnerable flank. Specifically, the lens is on Uddhav’s brother-in-law Shreedhar Patankar, the youngest brother of his wife Rashmi, in alleged money-laundering.

The agency has provisionally attached 11 residential flats owned by Pushpak Bullion at Nilambari Housing Society developed by Shree Saibaba Grihanirmiti Pvt. Ltd, promoted by Patankar, in Thane. Pushpak stands accused of accepting demonetised currency of Rs 84.5 crore against 258 kg of gold between November and December 2016. The ED claims that Pushpak transferred over Rs 30 crore from the proceeds to Shree Saibaba Grihanirmiti as unsecured loans, via a clutch of shell companies.

In a statement, the ED said the attached flats are estimated to be worth Rs 6.45 crore. “Nandkishore Chaturvedi, who operates a number of shell companies, transferred Pushpak’s money through his shell company Humsafar Dealer Pvt. Ltd in the garb of extending unsecured loans in excess of Rs 30 crore to Shree Saibaba Grihanirmiti Pvt. Ltd,” the agency said.