Maharashtra Assembly elections: Retired Mumbai cop Vasant Dhoble to contest polls from BJP or Shiv Sena (UBT)

Vasant Dhoble. File pic

Retired Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Vasant Dhoble, better known as the 'Hockey stick man', is set to enter politics by contesting the upcoming Maharashtra Assembly election. He is already in touch with the Bharatiya Janata Party and as well as Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray). Dhoble has confirmed his entry into politics, but has not decided on the party yet. He was requested by the merchants association, traders' associations and certain residents groups to fight the polls. Dhoble will be the second cop after former Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey to enter politics in the upcoming elections.

The 67-year-old, six-foot tall cop retired from service in 2015.

On September 19, another former senior cop, Sanjay Pandey, joined politics. The former Mumbai Police Commissioner, who was arrested in 2022 in the National Stock Exchange (NSE) co-location case, joined the Congress ahead of the Maharashtra Assembly elections.

He was inducted into the Congress by its Mumbai unit chief and Lok Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) Varsha Gaikwad at the party office in south Mumbai, news agency PTI reported.

Calling himself a 'secular-minded' person, the retired Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, who briefly served as the acting Maharashtra Director General of Police, maintained that no other political party, except the Congress, follows secular ideology.

Expressing confidence about the opposition Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coming to power in the state after the assembly polls, Pandey noted that under its rule, common citizens will not have to fear anything.

"As a retired police commissioner, I can say how false cases were filed against me," he said.

The retired 1986-batch IPS officer was arrested in 2022 by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a money laundering case linked to the alleged illegal phone tapping of NSE employees. Pandey, probed in the case in connection with a company founded by him, was later granted bail.

He served as Maharashtra's acting DGP and later as Mumbai Police commissioner when the MVA government, headed by Uddhav Thackeray, was in office. He was accused by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), then in the opposition, of conspiring with the MVA government to implicate its leaders in false cases.