Mumbai: Former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh, who has been designated a proclaimed offender was ordered by the Supreme Court on Thursday to reveal his whereabouts. Singh has petitioned the Supreme Court for protection from arrest. Singh’s appeal will be heard “only when he tells which area of the country or the world he is in,” the court informed his counsel. The lawsuit has been adjourned until November 22nd by the Supreme Court. A magistrate’s court in Mumbai declared Singh a “proclaimed offender” in an extortion case registered against him and some other police officers in the city.
Singh, 59, is currently the Director-General of the Home Guards. He last reported to work in May and then went on leave. In October, the state police notified the Bombay high court that his whereabouts were unknown. The Mumbai Police crime branch, which is investigating the extortion case, had requested the proclamation against him, claiming that the IPS officer could not be located even after a non-bailable warrant was issued. Sudhir Bhajipale, an additional chief metropolitan magistrate, has ordered Singh to appear in court in the case within 30 days. If he fails to appear, authorities can begin the process of attaching his property under Section 83 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
The extortion prosecution against Singh stems from a complaint filed by a real estate developer and hotelier alleging that the incidents occurred between January 2020 and March 2021. After the arrest of now-fired cop, Sachin Waze and the subsequent death of Thane businessman Mansukh Hiran near tycoon Mukesh Ambani’s south Mumbai house ‘Antilia,’ the IPS officer was demoted from the job of Mumbai police commissioner in March 2021. Param Bir Singh was last seen in public on April 7th, when he gave a testimony in the Antilia bomb scare case to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in Mumbai.