Former Mumbai police commissioner Sanjay Pandey, who was arrested in 2022 in the NSE co-location case, on Thursday joined the Congress ahead of the assembly polls in Maharashtra.

He was inducted into the Congress by its Mumbai unit chief and Lok Sabha MP Varsha Gaikwad at the party office in south Mumbai.

Calling himself a 'secular' minded person, the retired 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.

"I am not joining a party but a family. I wanted to join the Congress way back in 2004, but didn't get a chance," said Pandey on the occasion as he started a new political innings.

Expressing confidence about the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coming to power in Maharashtra 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 National Stock Exchange (NSE) employees. Pandey, probed in the case in connection with a company founded by him, was later granted bail.

Pandey 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 BJP, then in the opposition, of conspiring with the MVA government to implicate its leaders in false cases.

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