26/11 call record issue may suffer under Maria: Kamte's wife

Mumbai: The widow of IPS officer Ashok Kamte, killed in 26/11 terror attack, on Monday apprehended the matter surrounding the “discrepancies” in crucial call records of the 59-hours siege in 2008 provided to her would be put on the backburner under the watch of new Mumbai police chief. [caption id=“attachment_1395629” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Mumbai Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria. AFP[/caption] Rakesh Maria, who as Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) led the probe into the terror strike, took over as Police Commissioner on Tuesday. The call logs were of wireless conversations between the Mumbai Police control room and Kamte’s van on the day of his death. Under the RTI, Vinita Kamte had sought information on the call records of the police control room on the 26 November, 2008 attacks. However, she had claimed to have found “serious discrepancies” in the information given to her in November 2009 and February 2010. “I wrote to Chief Information Commissioner Ratnakar Gaikwad, appealing to him to order a probe into the issue of providing false information to me by the Government,” Vinita told PTI. Gaikwad then dashed off a letter to Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Amitabh Rajan asking him why a probe should not be ordered to find out how and why serious discrepancies crept in the information provided to Vinita. “Rajan is yet to respond to Gaikwad’s letter. I suspect Maria might intervene into the matter as he himself was in the control room during the terror attack,” she said. Vinita has accused Maria of not telling her who sent her husband towards Cama Hospital where he was killed by terrorists even though Maria was in charge of the main Police Control Room during the first few hours of 26/11. The comments are contained in ‘To The Last Bullet’, a book co-authored by Vinita that released in 2009. In the book, she has blamed Maria for not sending reinforcements when asked for, appearing to give wrong information about the shootout involving three officers, including Kamte and Lashkar-e-Toiba attackers, and also not helping them get medical assistance after they had been shot. Following the allegations, Maria had reportedly threatened to resign. PTI