Mumbai, March 3 Responding to the claim by former IPS officer K P Raghuvanshi that he faced pressure from then Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Chhagan Bhujbal to arrest Bal Thackeray, Bhujbal said on Tuesday that the "file" related to the case came from the police themselves.
Thackeray, the late founder of the Shiv Sena, was briefly arrested in 2000 for his alleged role in instigating the 1993 communal riots in Mumbai.
A biography of Raghuvanshi, released in his presence last week, quoted him as saying that he was under pressure from Bhujbal to arrest the Sena chief.
"I would like to ask Raghuvanshi, who provided me with the file? After we received the file from the police commissioner, we could not return it, because we had promised to implement the Srikrishna commission report (on the Mumbai riots)," said Bhujbal, now a senior NCP minister in the BJP-led Maharashtra government.
He also said that he had told senior police officer M N Singh that Thackeray should be granted bail, and if he was not, Thackeray's residence 'Matoshri' should be converted into a jail, Bhujbal further said.
Thackeray was arrested on July 25, 2000, by the Mumbai police for his alleged provocative writings in the Shiv Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana' during the riots.
He was produced before the court, but the case was dismissed and he was discharged.