Though the Supreme Court has enumerated violation of various laws by former Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh in blocking the registration of an FIR against the kin of a Congress MLA in an anti-money landing law abuse case in 2006, the Supreme Court drew the attention of the Maratha leader to the plight of farmers in Vidarbha region having a very high suicide rate.
“The Bombay high court after examining the provisions of the Money Landers Act and also the materials on record held that the letter of June 5, 2006 (by CM’s PS) and telephonic message recorded in the (police) station diary exhibit gross abuse of power by the concerned authority,” a bench comprising Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Gangulay recorded. The order, one of the most stinging against any CM in recent past, noted that the case had arisen in the backdrop of nearly 300 farmers’ suicide in Vidharbha and all of them were “victims of such illegal money landing business and the torture perpetrated in the recovery of such money.”
“This court is of the view that the way the interference was caused first from the office of the CM by his private secretary by telephone calls on May 31, 2006 and the manner the district collector was summoned by the CM on the very next day for giving instructions to specially treat any complaints filed against MLA Dilip Kumar Sananda and his family, has no precedent either in law or public admi-nistration,” the court held.