Corporators Deepak Mankar and Rashid Sheikh of the Congress and Ganesh Bidkar of the BJP said today that the list of corporators involved in criminal cases, as provided by the Police Commissionerate under the Right to Information Act (RTI), is faulty. The Indian Express had published a news item “Every third Pune corporator faces criminal cases” on Thursday, based on the information given by the Pune police commissionerate under the RTI.

Police Commissioner Jayant Umranikar had said that there could not be any doubt about information given under RTI. “It has to be 100 per cent correct data,” he had said. According to this information, Sheikh's name has appeared in six criminal cases, of which four are registered with the Wanavdi police.

“The information provided by the police is absolutely wrong because I was never arrested or even interrogated by the police in any of these cases. There are many Rashid Sheikhs among the 4.5 lakh Muslim population in Pune. The police have furnished the details of some other Rashid Sheikh,” he said.

When contacted, a Wanavdi police officer said that there is no case against corporator Rashid Sheikh, who is from Bhavani Peth. “We have cases against someone else who has the name Rashid Sheikh, who belongs to Wanavdi,” the officer said.

Mankar said that whatever complaints were lodged against him were for participation in political rallies. “The case mentioned against me at the Swargate police station was dissolved by the state government long back,” he said. When contacted, Swargate police officials confirmed that the case has been closed. “It is surprising that the names of those corporators who are involved in murder cases do not find mention in the list provided by the police commissionerate,” said Mankar.

Bidkar was shocked to see cases registered against his name. “I am not a criminal to be involved in so many crimes. There were a few cases against me, but only of the political kind, for using loudspeaker and so on. Three cases are already closed and I have the relevant documents to prove the facts,” he said.

Bidkar said the data provided by the police commissionerate was both outdated and incorrect and it was unfair that such innocuous cases were being clubbed under the banner of criminal cases.

Earlier, asked about this, DCP (Crime) Anil Kumbhare had said that the reason political morchas and other political activities are clubbed under criminal cases is that they amount to breaking the law and there are always chances that they can lead to a law-and-order situation.