Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Wednesday claimed the Centre is protecting IPS officer Rashmi Shukla who is being probed for alleged phone tapping of certain political leaders. Talking to reporters here, Raut said be it Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole, himself or some other leaders, ?all were labelled "anti-social elements" and their phones were tapped.

Some people were labelled as "drug peddlers and gangsters" and this happened when the Shiv Sena-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government was being formed in November 2019, the Rajya Sabha MP claimed.

“Someone was conducting surveillance on us and trying to find out about the formation of the new government. Our privacy was invaded. “One police officer, who is expected to work impartially, was doing it to show her loyalty to one political party and a leader. Now the Centre is protecting her, like always. This is unfortunate,” Raut said without naming Shukla, a former head of the State Intelligence Department (SID).

The senior IPS officer is facing an FIR in Mumbai and is being probed for allegedly putting the phone numbers of ?Raut and former BJP leader Eknath Khadse (who is now in the NCP) under surveillance when she headed the SID.The Pune police had also registered an FIR against Shukla in connection with alleged tapping of the phones of Patole. Shukla served as the Pune police commissioner between March 2016 and July 2018.

She is currently posted with the Central Reserve Police Force. In a plea filed in the Bombay High Court in one of the alleged phone tapping cases, Shukla had claimed she was being "falsely implicated" and called herself a victim of "political vendetta".