Former IPS officer, Ravindranath Patil has alleged that Nationalist Congress Party NCP MP Supriya Sule and Maharashtra Congress President Nana Patole were involved in a 2018 bitcoin fraud worth ₹5 crore. Patil, who spent 14 months in prison in the case, says he possesses the voice recordings, and implicates the two leaders.
In one voice recording, Supriya Sule is heard allegedly instructing one of the accused, Gaurav Mehta, an alleged witness, to encash bitcoins for election purposes, Patil said. A subsequent purported recording allegedly shows Nana Patole talking with then Pune Police Commissioner Amitabh Gupta over delays in encashment process.
The BJP is a party that is creating problems and bringing cheap politics to tarnish my reputation, Supriya Sule, who has categorically denied the allegations, told reporters. She told the BJP that their claims were ‘baseless’, and invited them to a debate, saying: ‘I am ready for a debate with a BJP representative, any time and any date of date.’
Political tensions in Maharashtra have now gone to the wall with the BJP backing the allegations against the opposition leaders. The accusations were dismissed by Sule as ‘conjecture and innuendo’ while reiterating that she would respond to them publicly.
Yet BJP frontally took part in raising this issue, further polarising the political discourse. Opposition parties, including the NCP and Congress, contend the accusations amount to a smear campaign before May’s elections, while the ruling party has accused opposition leaders of financial misconduct.
And this is on top of Maharashtra’s already volatile political atmosphere. Calls for transparency and accountability are growing louder as the allegations unfold and both sides begin gearing up for what is likely to be a protracted war of words. The feud certainly has made the political rivalry between the state even more intense, but whether concrete evidence will come to show Patil’s claims to be true is still in doubt.
(Form Agency Input)
