Mumbai Mirror: Mumbai: Sunday, June 25, 2017.
Mumbai police
learnt about the lapse a year after 26/11, but kept mum
A substandard
bulletproof jacket that failed to protect former ATS chief Hemant Karkare from
the bullets of 26/ 11 attackers and later kicked up a massive uproar over the
safety of Mumbai police personnel ended up in a dustbin at JJ Hospital.
This
startling revelation has come in the form of a reply to a Right to Information
application. Apparently, the police department learnt about the lapse a year
after 10 LeT men brought carnage to the streets of Mumbai, but chose to keep
mum.
Earlier, the
force had given an evasive reply after the IPS officer’s wife Kavita sought to
know its whereabouts through an RTI. Authorities had said that “the jacket was
lost and could not be traced.”
If the photo
of Ajmal Kasab became the face of terror after the 2008 bloodbath, a picture of
the former Anti-Terrorism Squad boss with a bulletproof vest and helmet,
holding a revolver one hand and a mobile phone on the other minutes before his
death, continues to haunt the city.
Karkare,
additional commissioner of police Ashok Kamte and encounter specialist Vijay
Salaskar were killed after the police jeep that they were travelling in was
ambushed near Cama Hospital.
For years,
the Mumbai police’s stock response to the bulletproof jacket controversy was
that a section of JJ Hospital staff may have discarded the vest as they were
not aware or ‘apprised’ by seniors that it belonged to Karkare.
The new twist
in the vest story came to the fore after activist Anil Galgali filed an RTI query
asking for the same information that had been sought by Kavita Karkare eight
years ago. It now says that that the jacket was thrown into a dustbin by a ward
boy at JJ.
Too
callous?
Atop police
officer, who was a part of the investigation team, said one knew what had
happened to the jacket for more than a year. “It was only when an enquiry was
ordered into the matter, a ward boy from the hospital claimed to have thrown it
away. Later, the ward boy also went missing for some time.”
The officer
said the police recorded the ward boy’s statement later, but no effort was made
to gather any evidence to support his claim. “No one saw him collecting
Karkare’s clothes and the jacket nor the hospital had any CCTV records. The
enquiry was closed after recording his statement.”
The “Karkare
bullet proof jacket” issue surfaced a year after the 26/11attacks when Mumbai
police decided to buy high-quality bulletproof vests and advanced body armours
to better equip the force against future attacks.
Ashok Kamte’s
wife Vinita, who challenged the Mumbai police’s response during the terror
strike, said she did not ‘take up’ the bulletproof jacket issue with the
authorities.
Nearly nine
years and several controversies later, the Maharashtra Police have placed an
order for 5,000 bulletproof vests with MKU, a reputed military equipment
manufacturer headquartered in Kanpur, which will be importing the vests from
Germany.
Vinita Kamte
said, “It is surprising that the bulletproof jacket of Hemant Karkare could get
accidentally disposed of by people not plugged into the gravitus of such an
object. All the personal belongings of the police officers felled by the
marauding 26/11 terrorists should have been properly secured and formed part of
the larger investigations.”
S M Mushrif,
a former IPS officer and author of the book Who Killed Karkare, offered a
different view. “I have opined that domestic forces were at play to eliminate
Karkare. The plot to bump him off coincided with Pakistan’s larger 26/11
gameplan. So I do not really subscribe to the facts that a faulty bulletproof
jacket or similar sub-prime materials used by him led to his death.”
Karkare’s son
Akaash declined to comment on the matter.