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No sabotage in top cops’ deaths: report
The Ram Pradhan Committee report that the Maharashtra government tabled in the legislature on Monday ruled out sabotage in the deaths of three senior police officers Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte and Vijay Salaskar on November 26, 2008.
The Ram Pradhan Committee report that the Maharashtra government tabled in the legislature on Monday ruled out sabotage in the deaths of three senior police officers Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte and Vijay Salaskar on November 26, 2008.
Kamte’s widow, Vinita, has consistently alleged Rakesh Maria, the joint commissioner of police and then in charge of the control room, didn’t respond to her husband’s calls for more forces at Cama Hospital.
The report said the three officers decided on their own to travel into the lane where the terrorists ambushed them. Other officers, it said, had no information about their plan.
The committee found the decision to travel by a Toyota Qualis into the lane from the front of Cama Hospital was sudden.
“Obviously, (the officers) did not know that the terrorists had left Cama and were in the same lane, facing them from the opposite direction,” said the report. This conclusion was based on the statement of Salaskar’s aide, Arun Dada Jadhav, the sole survivor of the ambush near Rang Bhavan.
The report also quotes Maria as saying that a large number of policemen were deployed around the area.
“Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar took Assistant Commissioner of Police S.A. Bhambre’s Qualis along with his staff (driver Balasaheb Bhosale, Jaywant Patil and Yogesh Patil) without conveying anything to him and drove away towards Mahapalika Marg via Tayyabji Marg and Rang Bhavan,” said the report. “Thus, they faced the terrorists…”
