Bravemen of Mumbai

The three officers who fell to militants in Mumbai last night were each a police star but deeply unlike one another in temperament and methods.

The soft-spoken Hemant Karkare, was an engineer by training and a sculptor by hobby, a stickler for rules and fair investigation under whom the state’s terror investigators unearthed one Hindu bombing plot after another.

Vijay Salaskar was an “encounter specialist” — a breed not known for sticking to copybook methods — who shot dead 70-odd gangsters but was transferred for a while when his team came under suspicion of having mafia links.

The tall Ashok Kamte was a bundle of opposites His fit, muscular build and trademark beret — rather than a senior police officer’s khaki cap — gave him the look of an army commando. And sure enough, he too had taken part in many encounters, earning a reputation for daring.

Yet, what he stood out for was his coolness of mind and this led him to be trained as a negotiator. And it was this skill, always in demand in a hostage situation, that explained his presence with Karkare and Salaskar before the Cama and Albless Hospital last night.

Three militants had sprayed bullets at commuters at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus before entering the hospital. When the gunfight began, all the three officers were wearing bullet-proof vests — of the kind that leaves the sides of the torso unprotected(It's reported in some other news media that Salaskar never wear a bullet-proof vest.So not sure which version is correct).

Karkare, shown on TV wearing a light blue shirt, dark trousers and a helmet, talking continuously on his cellphone, took three bullets in the neck. Salaskar too was hit in the neck. As the militants tried to escape, a further exchange of gunfire outside the nearby Metro Adlabs multiplex saw Kamte getting shot in the head. The entire 35,000-strong force mourned for three of its best officers.

Karkare, former colleagues said, had followed an unusual career course, getting a BTech in mechanical engineering from Nagpur in 1975 and working as a marketing executive with Hindustan Lever before joining the IPS in 1982.

He battled Naxalites during his 1991 posting in Chandrapur, where he developed the hobby of making driftwood sculptures. He had some 150 such sculptures, some of them displayed in his office.

After tackling drug traffickers and white-collar criminals in Mumbai, he joined spy agency RAW where his work during the IC-814 hijack earned him a posting in Vienna where he spent nine years working on secret missions.

He returned a couple of years ago as joint commissioner (administration) but his skills in terror intelligence-gathering were too precious to be wasted. Last January, he was appointed anti-terrorist squad (ATS) chief.

Known as a “copybook cop” for conscientious adherence to every norm, Karkare was “deeply pained” by the accusations of torturing Malegaon suspects, officers said.

Karkare cracked the blasts in Panvel, Vashi and Thane theatres, arresting Hindutva activists of the Sanatan Sanstha. State police, earlier accused of targeting Muslims after every blast, soon had Malegaon to point to.

Kamte had followed his father Marutrao, an inspector-general of police, into the force. He did the family name proud as deputy commissioner of Solapur, when he became a hero among residents.

“A cop that turned Solapur from a wrong city to the right one. The person who every responsible Solapurkar liked and loved,” writes one of the 400-odd fans on his Orkut profile.

Salaskar made last night’s team because of his reputation as a gung-ho encounter specialist. The college teacher’s son had broken the back of the Amar Naik gang by killing the don himself in 1997, then helped bust Arun Gawli by gunning down many of his henchmen.


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Hemanth Karkare was killed in the line of duty during the Mumbai attacks and was accorded a hero's farewell, but Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare was deeply unhappy before he died because of the way the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had questioned his integrity, says a former top cop.

Karkare had called on veteran police officer Julio Ribeiro just a day before he was killed Wednesday night.

"He came to me because he was looking for someone to hold his hand," Ribeiro told IANS on phone from Mumbai while stressing that Karkare was not a man to be politically influenced. No place for terrorists’ bodies in India: Muslim group

"He did not bother about the Shiv Sena, he was more bothered about the BJP, which had a well-oiled propaganda machinery and was running a concerted campaign against him that he had filed false cases against Pragnya Thakur and others."

The ATS has arrested Thakur and at least nine others in connection with the Sep 29 blast in Malegaon, suspected to have been carried out by Hindu fundamentalists.

Karkare, a police officer belonging to the 1982 batch, was in the eye of a storm for leading the probe. Political heads roll in terror aftermath

Ribeiro, the highly celebrated former police commissioner of Mumbai who was director general of police, Punjab, at the height of militancy there, said it was ironic that Karkare, whose integrity was being questioned by the BJP for unearthing the involvement of Hindu fundamentalists in the 2006 Malegaon blast, was also on top of the hit list of the Indian Mujahideen.

Two months ago, Muslim clerics had gone to see him and surrounded him because of his decision to comb the area in Andheri following the blasts there. When in Gadchiroli, conducting an anti-Maoist operation, it was the Maoists who made him the target.

"But he never got flustered," Ribeiro said. "He kept a low profile. Karkare was not the type of person to be influenced politically. He would not do anything wrong. People accused him of being politically motivated. How can you make a false case with so many facts coming to light?" Ribeiro asked.

"I told him not to worry. (BJP leader L.K.) Advani calling the prime minister (over Pragnya Thakur's torture allegations) unnerved him, that his integrity should be questioned."

"I told him we would support him and I would write about it."

Ribeiro said Karkare had told him he had managed to get hold of a CD with additional information on the Malegaon case and he planned to confront those already under the scanner with these facts. But he was not given further custody of some of them. `Terrorists left Karachi on Nov 21`’

Karkare was given a state funeral Saturday. His widow has refused the Rs. 1 crore donation that BJP leader and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has announced for security personnel who died in the Mumbai attacks.

Karkare was so perturbed with the allegations against him that he had urged state Home Minister R.R. Patil to transfer him from the ATS, sources close to him disclosed. This was hours before he was gunned down.

His opponents were beginning to target not just him but also throw mud on the character of his children, which he found "unbearable", the sources said.

Courtesy:Sify.