Dy CM's wife & a bookie's daughter: All about the Maharashtra scandal

March 20,2023

It’s a scandal that will reverberate in the corridors of power in Maharashtra for a long time to come, possibly right up to 2024 when the state goes to elections.

Amruta Fadnavis, the wife of the state’s deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, has filed a case of “criminal inducement” against Aniksha Jaisinghani, a law graduate and the daughter of notorious bookie Anil Jaisinghani.

Amruta Fadnavis has alleged that Aniksha made an offer to use some incriminating information on bookies in her possession to extort money from them. Apart from other allegations, the FIR filed by Amruta Fadnavis with the Malabar Hill police also refers to a series of videos, voice notes and texts received from an unknown number, which she believes belongs to Anil Jaisinghanai.

These messages, Amruta Fadnavis has alleged, were an attempt to exert pressure on her to accept the offer to trap bookies.

While Anil Jaisinghani has been on the run for some years now, Aniksha was arrested on Thursday, March 16 after The Indian Express’s Mumbai edition ran a report on the FIR filed on February 20.

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It is still a mystery how the daughter of a wanted bookie not only gained access to a top minister’s wife but also met her at their official residence on multiple occasions and often travelled with her.

What is even more mysterious is that no one in Devendra Fadnavis’ office managed to warn him and his wife about the company they were keeping. According to his own statement on the floor of the house, his wife first met Aniksha sometime in 2015-16, when he was the state’s chief minister.

But before we get into all the questions this scandal in Maharashtra raises, and there are many, here are some details of the case:

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What does the FIR say?

Apart from the offer to make money by either targeting bookies or helping them, Amruta Fadnavis has also accused Aniksha of offering her Rs 1 crore to get the charges against her father dropped.

As mentioned earlier in this report, the FIR also refers to some videos, voice notes and text messages that Amruta Fadnavis received a few days after Aniksha made the offer to target bookies.

While there is not much known yet about the videos, voice notes and texts, the only detail available is that one combination of two videos shows a bag being stuffed with money and then being handed over to a staff member at the deputy CM’s official bungalow, Sagar.

Watch: Why Amruta Fadnavis filed an FIR against Aniksha Jaisinghani

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Devendra Fadnavis, while speaking on the floor of the house, claimed that forensic tests have revealed that the two bags were different and that there was no money in the one that was handed over to a staff member.

According to Amruta Fadnavis, when they first met, Aniksha had claimed she was a designer of clothes, jewellery and footwear. She asked Amruta Fadnavis to wear her creations at public events as a promotional exercise.

Amruta Fadnavis, the FIR says, agreed to promote Aniksha’s creations out of sympathy for her. It seems Aniksha had told her that after her (Aniksha’s) mother’s death, she took care of her entire family. A book written by Aniksha in her mother's memory was unveiled at Fadnavis’ official residence in an intimate ceremony.

The FIR says that Aniksha met Amruta Fadnavis at her husband’s official residence on several occasions. Aniksha was often accompanied by her sister or brother at these meetings.

About the dresses and jewellery that Aniksha gave Amruta Fadnavis, the latter says in the FIR: “Once, she came and handed some designer clothes and jewellery to one of our staff members and requested me to wear it at some public event. I don’t remember whether I wore that dress at any event or not. The material was returned to her through my staff members or donated as I do not have possession of any of her clothes.”

The FIR also refers to Aniksha presenting Amruta Fadnavis a necklace at Sagar bungalow sometime in November-December 2022. Amruta Fadnavis says in the FIR that she lied about wearing the necklace at a few events because she did not want to break Aniksha’s heart.

The necklace, says the FIR, was returned within three weeks of being received.

The FIR mentions Aniksha boasting about her father’s (absconding bookie Anil Jaisinghani) proximity to top leaders cutting across party lines. “In one meeting, Aniksha said her father had close relations with leaders of various political parties and later handed over an envelope to one of the staff members instructing her to give it to me. When I opened it, I found a handwritten note. But since I did not understand its content, I kept it aside,” the FIR reads.

The FIR refers in detail to the events of January 27, 2023, when Aniksha travelled in Amruta Fadnavis’ car from Pune to Mumbai (at least some distance). It was during this car ride that the conversation about trapping bookies took place.

“I was surprised to see her [at an event in Pune] as she stays in Mumbai and when I asked her about it, she told me that one of my employees had given her the pass,” the FIR quotes Amruta Fadnavis as saying.

According to the FIR, the two did not leave the event together, but she met Aniksha again on her way back to Mumbai. The details are not clear, but the FIR says Aniksha had lied to the officers in the security detail about Amruta Fadnavis wanting to see her. “Despite knowing she was lying, I allowed her to sit in my vehicle because I did not want to create panic,” reads the FIR.

According to the FIR, as soon as Aniksha made the offer to trap or help bookies, she was asked to get out of the car. Aniksha then travelled the rest of the distance to Mumbai in another vehicle in the convoy.

The FIR says that on February 16 at 9.30 pm, Aniksha contacted Amruta Fadnavis and after some preliminary discussions allegedly told her that her (Aniksha’s) father had been named an accused in a case and offered Rs 1 crore to save him. “As soon as I heard that, I disconnected the phone call and blocked her number,” the FIR quotes Amruta Fadnavis as saying.

Between 11.55pm, February 18; and 00.15am, February 19, Amruta Fadnavis received 22 videoclips, three voice notes and many messages from an “unknown number” on her WhatsApp.

One of her staff members also received similar video clips, voice notes and messages from the same number. “Then at 10pm on February 19 again, about 40 messages, videos, voice notes and screenshots were sent from the same number. I learnt that the mobile number belongs to Aniksha’s father,” Amruta Fadnavis says in the FIR.

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Aniksha’s arrest

The Mumbai police arrested Aniksha on March 16. The arrest documents identify her as a resident of Ulhasnagar and a law graduate.

Aniksha has been remanded in police custody till March 21.

According to the police, they are now looking for the accused No. 2, Anil Jaisinghani.

Who is bookie Anil Jaisinghani

Anil Jaisinghani is an accused in multiple cases and has been arrested three times. Many of these cases were registered when Devendra Fadnavis was the chief minister and home minister between 2014 and 2019.

Jaisinghani, possibly India’s most notorious bookie, is wanted in five cases in seven states.

In 2010, Fadnavis had questioned why Jaisinghani was provided police protection, prompting the then home minister RR Patil to withdraw it.

The protection at some point was renewed and in 2015, it was Fadnavis’ turn to answer the same question. Fadnavis had answered that Jaisinghani was given protection under the previous Congress-NCP government and that it would be withdrawn.

Around the same time, the Enforcement Directorate conducted raids in Mumbai, Kalyan and Ulhasnagar in connection with the alleged betting racket in the Indian Premier League (IPL). Jaisinghani’s residence in Ulhasnagar was also raided.

In 2016, the Azad Maidan police in Mumbai booked Jaisinghani for allegedly forging a hospital certificate to avoid police custody.

The same year, Mumbai’s Sakinaka police station and the Goa police booked Jaisinghani for allegedly registering a false rape case. The police named Aniksha as an accused in the case.

What has Devendra Fadnavis said so far?

On March 16, Devendra Fadnavis informed the legislative assembly that his wife’s friendship with Aniksha started in 2015-16.

He said the two lost touch for a while and renewed the association in 2021 when the BJP formed the government with a group of Shiv Sena rebels led by the current chief minister Eknath Shinde.

“For 18 months she (the designer) was talking to my wife and visiting my house. She has recorded all the phone conversations [she had with Amruta Fadnavis]. She used to come to our house with either her sister or brother who would secretly record the meetings,” he said.

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Fadnavis said that it is possible that after Aniksha failed to get anything incriminating that she and her father “set up this trap”.

“One serious video was there. In that, the girl is packing money and that bag, in a separate video clip, [it] is seen being handed over to a staff member in my house,” said Fadnavis. He said it was after this video that he and his wife decided to file an FIR against Aniksha.

Fadnavis said this was a bid to blackmail his wife and defame him. Speaking to reporters outside the state legislature, he said names of several political leaders have been thrown around in conversation that Aniksha sent to his wife. “Many things will come out soon, and there will be a lot of information in the charge sheet,” he said.

Troubling questions

The entire unsavoury episode raises many questions:

  1. Why was the deputy CM’s wife hobnobbing with the daughter of a bookie on the run?
  2. Isn’t it strange that while Devendra Fadnavis was raising hell in the assembly on why Anil Jaisinghani enjoyed police protection, his wife was friends with Jaisinghani’s daughter?
  3. While the FIR against Aniksha was lodged at the Malabar Hill station on February 20, why was the arrest made only after The Indian Express ran a report on it on March 16. [Devendra Fadnavis has claimed that the FIR was kept a secret because the police wanted to induce Anil Jaisinghani into a meeting and then arrest him.]
  4. The FIR refers to multiple videos, voice notes, and messages that Amruta Fadnavis received from a number believed to be Anil Jaisinghani’s. What are the contents of these videos, voice notes and texts? [Devendra Fadnavis has claimed that most videos, voice notes and messages are meaningless. He, however, said several conversations that were sent to his wife’s numbers are between Anil Jaisinghani and some top political leaders. Fadnavis said the recorded conversations were perhaps an attempt to convey the message of Anil Jaisinghani’s proximity to leaders cutting across party lines.]
  5. Isn’t it a poor reflection on the state’s intelligence department that a known bookie’s daughter is allowed to not only meet the CM/deputy CM’s wife but also develop an apparently deep friendship?
  6. The details in the FIR about the dresses and jewellery that Amruta Fadnavis received from Aniksha are far from satisfactory. In one instance, the former does not even remember if some of this material was returned to Aniksha or donated to charity by her staff.

The political slugfest

The sensational revelations have, no surprises there, led to a political slugfest. One of the most entertaining of these was the messages exchanged between Amruta Fadnavis and Shiv Sena’s member (Uddhav Thackeray faction) of Parliament Priyanka Chaturvedi.

Of course, others – both political and non-political players – have also jumped into the fray.

Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole had demanded an investigation, saying that as per Fadnavis’ statement in the assembly, his family knew the Jaisinghanis even when he was the chief minister. “All we want to say is that Devendra Fadnavis is the home minister of Maharashtra. He should make sure that a fair investigation takes place and bring the facts placed before the people,” he said.