Mumbai: The sessions court on Saturday rejected the anticipatory bail plea of Prashant Krishna Tayshete, a retired deputy chief engineer of the BMC’s stormwater drains department (operation & maintenance), who has been booked in connection with the Mithi River desilting scam.
Tayshete had approached the sessions court on May 19, claiming he had no involvement in the case. While the court rejected his plea on Saturday, it granted him interim protection from arrest for two weeks to allow him time to approach the high court.
The detailed, reasoned order for the rejection is not yet available and will be released subsequently. The retired officer has claimed that he was executive engineer (O&M), mechanical SWD at Dadar office and had the additional charge of deputy chief (O&M) mechanical SWD at the city area from Jan 2017 to March 2020.
Tayshete had, however, claimed that he was never deputed for the desilting of nallahs or the Mithi River, as the major portion of the desilting work for the Mithi River was handled by the deputy chief engineer of the eastern suburbs.
He had further claimed that he has no knowledge regarding the bogus MoU of dumping sites and was never deputed to carry out any kind of desilting of Mithi river and transporting the silt.
Tayshete had claimed that his only work was to visit Delhi and Kerala to see the demonstration of the desilting machine submit the report accordingly.
The plea was however, opposed by the prosecution, BMC officers had compelled the contractor to hire machines at an inflated rent from Virgo Specialties. Further, the prosecution has alleged that the contractors generated fraudulent bills for transporting sludge out of Mumbai. The civic body suffered a loss of more than Rs 65.54 crore due to the entire scam.
