Mumbai, June 18: There seems to be a reversal of roles in Maharashtra. In 1998, it was Congress members who tore up the Action Taken Report (ATR) on the Srikrishna Commission findings on the 1992-93 Mumbai riots. The ruling saffron alliance reluctantly tabled the committee report in the Assembly in August 1998, six months after it was submitted by Justice B.N. Srikrishna. The House rejected it as “one-sided.”
The report clearly indicted the ruling Shiv Sena for the bloodiest riots the city had witnessed.
Opposition’s turn
It is now the Opposition’s turn to bay for the blood of the ruling Congress alliance. The report of the two-member committee, which probed police lapses during the November 26, 2008 terror attacks, was not tabled in the Assembly session. Instead, the government tabled an ATR and claimed it had not “entirely accepted” the committee report.
Did the Mumbai police and the government perform their role during the terror attacks?
The Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party combine certainly does not think so. In the winter session of the Assembly in December 2008 held in Nagpur, the Sena’s Ramdas Kadam and the BJP’s Gopinath Munde caused commotion making allegations that the police were inept and sleeping on the job.
The new Chief Minister, Ashok Chavan, then hastily assured them that a high-power committee would probe the role of the people Mr. Kadam and Mr. Munde said should be sacked. They were the then Director-General of Police, A.N. Roy; Mumbai Police Commissioner Hasan Gafoor and the then Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Chitkala Zutshi. While initially Mr. Chavan said the committee would probe the roles of these officials, its terms of reference were considerably broad as R.D. Pradhan, who headed the panel, told journalists in May.
Mr. Pradhan, former Union Home Secretary, and V. Balachandran, former Special Secretary with the Research and Analysis Wing, examined the role of the police and intelligence lapses, and made recommendations.
At the press conference last month, Mr. Pradhan said the Mumbai police did their best in a “war-like” situation. He avoided all questions on lapses on the part of the police or the government. On the contrary, he praised the police and put the blame on the lack of direct intelligence information. However, the report clearly did not give the police a clean chit as it was made out to be.
A few days before the ATR was tabled, Mr. Gafoor was shunted to the Maharashtra Police Housing Department and ironically the head of State Intelligence, D. Shivanandan, was appointed to head the city police.
As intelligence or the lack of it was one of the main reasons — the terror attacks took everyone by surprise — it is curious that Mr. Shivanandan has been chosen to head the city police. Mr. Gafoor clearly is the fall guy for this government, which was first pushed into ordering an inquiry into official lapses and which then, citing lame excuses, was not too keen on making the report public. The report praises Rakesh Maria, Joint Commissioner (Crime), who was manning the control room, for his exemplary work. Mr. Roy no longer heads the State police and Ms. Zutshi, who was trapped in the Taj Mahal hotel, has retired.
Questions remain
Some questions remain. What about the roles of Mr. Roy and other senior police officials? What is the kind of leadership they have inspired for the committee to spare them? What about the lapses during the Cama Hospital encounter in which three senior policemen were killed by the terrorists? The government has resorted to its favourite mechanism of appointing a committee, but of what use is such a panel when the contents are not made public?
One person who is fighting to learn the truth is Vinita Kamte, wife of the Additional Commissioner of Police (East) Ashok Kamte. She has filed an application under the Right to Information Act demanding records of the calls her husband made to the police control room. She has information that the control room did not respond to calls for additional reinforcements and that is one of the reasons why her husband and other officers lost their lives that night.
Ms. Kamte’s request has been rejected once and she has gone in appeal. She claims there are missing portions in the log sheets. The Pradhan Committee examined only officials, and did not interview anyone else, for reasons of time constraint.
Some of its recommendations are already in place and it is difficult to understand why this hastily done job was necessary in the first place.
–Agencies