Designer Aniksha arrested following a complaint by Amruta Fadnavis, wife of Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in Mumbai on March 18.
| Photo Credit: ANI
A court in Mumbai on Tuesday extended the police custody of designer Aniksha Jaisinghani to March 24. She was arrested in a case of allegedly bribing Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’s wife Amruta with ₹10 crore.
Ms. Jaisinghani is the daughter of notorious cricket bookie Anil Jaisinghani.
The court also remanded her father and cousin Nirmal Jaisinghani, who was arrested on March 20, to police custody till March 27 in the same case.
Public Prosecutor Jaising Desai said Aniksha’s custody was needed to find out what videos and other material against Ms. Fadnavis was there in her possession. He said there was a conspiracy and the accused were trying to frame for a particular purpose. “They wanted to frame a public servant through the wife. They had tried to extort ₹10 crore from her, but that was done through three handsets which have not been recovered.”
He also argued that Anil Jaisinghani had been wanted in many cases and got police protection for the past 25 years, therefore sought for his police custody for 14 days.
According to the First Information Report, Ms. Fadnavis met Ms. Jaisinghani in November 2021 when she said she designed clothes, footwear, and bags. The 27-year-old law student told the State Home Minister’s wife that she did not have a mother and needed to support her family. She offered a bribe of ₹1 crore to Ms. Fadnavis to clear her father’s name in several cases, which was turned down.
The father and daughter were charged with Sections 120 B (conspiracy), 383 (extortion) of the Indian Penal Code and several provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. Mr. Jaisinghani had been on the run for eight years. Several cases were registered against him in Maharashtra, Assam, Goa, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh. Some were related to betting. Several other cases against him involved government servants to act against his rivals and filing fake cases against them.
