Mumbai: The disappearance of the bullet-proof
jacket of Hemant Karkare, who was killed during the 26/11
attacks, is turning out to be one of the biggest mysteries for
Mumbai police which continues to be clueless as to where it
vanished.
Running from pillar to post, personnel of elite crime
branch of Mumbai Police have been sweating to trace the
remains of the jacket and have not spared even the shops in
South Mumbai's Chor Bazar.
Sweeper of JJ Hospital Dinesh Gattar, who sprung a
surprise last December by saying that he had dumped jacket of
Karkare along with the hospital waste, thus waking up Mumbai
police from a slumber who were caught napping over the
mysterious disappearance of the bullet proof jacket.
Recently, on a tip-off that the inside material including
the steel and iron caste used in the bullet-proof jacket might
have been sold to vendors in Chor Bazar, teams of crime branch
searched virtually every scrap dealer in the area but without
any luck.
While already red-faced police was maintaining a studied
silence over the entire issue officially, sources within the
department said that every lead was probed thoroughly so that
the jacket of the former anti-terror chief Karkare, killed by
Ajmal Iman Kasab outside Cama Hospital on 26/11, could be
traced.
The Crime Branch had registered a case against Kasab, the
lone surviving Lashker-e-Toiba terrorist out of 10 who carried
out attack on Mumbai in November 2008, for killing Karkare,
Additional Commissioner of Police Ashok Kamte and Inspector
Vijay Salaskar.
Senior police officials, requesting anonymity, opined that
bullet-proof jacket is the first line of evidence which should
have been taken into the custody by the investigators.
However, Mumbai police found this blooper only after slain
IPS officer's wife, Kavita Karkare, filed an RTI plea in which
the police admitted that the jacket was not traceable. This
resulted in a furore as the wife and other experts had
levelled allegations of poor upkeep of jacket, which could
have been crucial forensic evidence in the probe of audacious
terror attack of 26/11.
The allegations also included that the poor quality of the
bullet-proof vest worn by Karkare and the disappearance could
be one of the cover up exercise by vested interests.
The Mumbai police, after facing flak for missing the
evidence, is looking for the traces of elusive jacket in the
narrow by lanes of the market infamous of trading stolen goods
besides the Chor Bazar.
Some of the scrap dealers have been questioned if they had
come across a particular kind of metal plates that is used in
bulletproof vests, the officials said.
Gattar had claimed that he had put the blood-laden jacket
of Karkare in a garbage bag carrying other bio-medical waste
from the hospital by mistake and sent it for disposal.
"On the night of November 27, after Karkare's body was
brought to JJ hospital for autopsy, I had mistakenly put the
jacket along with bio-medical and non-medical waste in
polythene bags which was sent to the Deonar dump grounds for
disposal," the sweeper had said in the statement on December
22, 2008.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, January 31, 2010, 14:18