Mumbai, January 01: Amid controversy over the quality of the bullet-proof vest worn by slain ATS chief Hemant Karkare during 26/11, the Maharashtra government today asked eight senior officers about the missing status of a file relating to the purchase of jackets on a high court direction.
Notices have been issued to state principal secretary and seven senior police officers seeking explanation as to how the file relating to purchase of jackets for the force between 2002 and 2004 had gone missing.
A reply has been sought from Principal Secretary (Home) P K Jain; Additional DGP (planning & coordination) Subhash Awate; Joint Commissioner of police (Administration) Bhagwant More; DIG (Prisons) Rajnish Seth; Ashutosh Dumbre Additional Commissioner of Police (Spl Branch 1) and Deputy Commissioners of Police Vijay Jadhav, Sanjay Apranti and S R Paraskar.
Maharashtra Home Minister R R Patil told reporters that these officers have been asked to file their replies within a month.
The government was acting on a direction of the Bombay High Court, which has asked it to file a reply to a PIL filed by a social activist alleging that jackets purchased by police department were defective and led to the death of Karkare during 26/11 terror attack.
The matter would be heard when the court resumes after vacation next week.
Social activist Santosh Daundkar, who filed the PIL, had learnt through an RTI application that the file had gone missing following which he had moved the High Court seeking a probe into the circumstances of its disappearance, his lawyer Y P Singh said.
The PIL alleged negligence by public servants in purchase of sub-standard bullet-proof vests at exorbitant prices. The jacket worn by Karkare that fateful night was the one from that lot, Daundkar stated in the PIL.
The petitioner said he made enquiries into the matter and came across the “startling fact that the file containing information about irregularities in the purchase had gone missing”.
He claimed he had “assembled a few incriminating elements which reveal merciless corruption practised by public servants who indulged in blatant violations of law in the high-value procurement of jackets”.
—Agencies