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He was arrested by central agencies in a corruption and money laundering case which is still to be decided. Deshmukh spent 14 months in jail and where the idea of writing his own version of events—a revenge tome—germinated.

In the book, ‘Diary of a Home Minister’, out this week, he claims the central agencies came after him when he refused to implicate top leaders of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) at Devendra Fadnavis’s insistence.

While Fadnavis himself was not available for comment, BJP legislator and head of the party’s women’s wing Chitra Wagh called Deshmukh’s claims a “bunch of lies.”

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She said she had “personally challenged Deshmukh to show proof to support his allegations but he was not been able to do so. If going ahead he still fails to make the evidence public then we will have to see his claims in the book as an attempt to defame deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis ahead of the elections.”

Deshmukh alleges in ‘The Diary of a Home Minister’ that he has been a victim of a political conspiracy hatched to get him out of office and embarrass the MVA government. He contends that in February 2021 crude gelatine sticks were planted outside the Altamount Road residence of Mukesh Ambani by former encounter cop Sachin Waze with the explicit intention of them being discovered by someone.

Through the book, Deshmukh casts doubts on the role played by Waze and Parambir Singh and broadly hints at prior knowledge.

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The ‘conspiracy’ as such went out of hand when the Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad began an independent investigation and decided to call Hiren, a police informer and also the owner of the car which was used to transport the gelatine sticks to Antilia, for questioning.

On the day he was supposed to present himself before the ATS, Hiren’s body was found floating in the marshes of Reti bunder in Thane.

Several phone calls and text messages to elicit Parambir Singh’s reaction to Deshmukh’s claim in the book, went unanswered.

The chain of events that started with the Antilia episode resulted in the transfer of Singh as Mumbai CP and Singh’s unprecedented letter in which he accused Deshmukh, his boss, of using Mumbai police officers, including Sachin Waze, to collect ₹100 crore from owners of beer bars and permit rooms.

“It looked like the entire episode was scripted in advance. Singh knew something would happen and had hence appointed Waze in the (Antilia) case,” Deshmukh writes in ‘Diary of A Home Minister’.

He further claims that just as the Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad which registered the case was about to get to the bottom of the conspiracy, the case was handed over to the National Investigation Authority, a central agency.

A subsequent CBI probe into Parambir Singh’s allegations led to Deshmukh stepping down and his incarceration. Deshmukh says in the book, a claim he has repeated elsewhere too, that while the Antilia probe was going on he was approached by a middleman named Samit Kadam, through whom he spoke to Fadnavis several times. Deshmukh alleges that Fadnavis wanted him to implicate some MVA leaders.

“I was convinced that Devendra Fadnavis was either behind the whole script or was at the very least, a key player in the script,” he writes in the book. A claim that Chitra Wagh has emphatically described as false.

In the book, published by Pune-based Mehta Publishing, Deshmukh also writes about a two-page affidavit Kadam wanted him to sign which contained the following four allegations: First, then chief minister Uddhav Thackeray had asked him to collect ₹300 crore since his party needed funds for Mumbai civic polls.

Second, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray was involved in the suicide of Sushant Singh Rajput’s manager Disha Salian. Third, Ajit Pawar had asked him to help his son Parth collect money from owners of the gutkha and pan masala industries.

Fourth, Thackeray’s close aide and then transport minister, Anil Parab, wanted Deshmukh to shield him in an ongoing probe into the allegedly illegal construction of a resort at Dapoli in Konkan.

Deshmukh claims that as all these were trumped-up claims, he refused to sign the affidavit.

Deshmukh writes in his book that he also apprised Sharad Pawar about what had happened with Kadam, and that Pawar told him the MVA government “would have collapsed the next day had he signed that affidavit.”

The book comes ahead of assembly elections in Maharashtra. Since the events mentioned in the book, the Shiv Sena and the NCP have both split.

Deshmukh who has opted to stay with Sharad Pawar is the sitting MLA from Katol. His son, Salil, has been given the NCP (SP) ticket from there for the elections in November.

Deshmukh credits Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut for pushing him to write the book when the two of them were in Mumbai’s Arthur Road prison together.