Maharashtra government admits Maria upset, threatening to quit

Mumbai, Nov 27: The Maharashtra government Friday admitted that Mumbai Joint Police Commissioner (Crime) Rakesh Maria is "upset" over allegations leveled by the widow of the slain police officer Ashok Kamte and is threatening to quit.

Though Maria has declined to comment on the issue, he met Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Chandra Iyengar in the Mantralaya, the state secretariat here.

Interacting with media persons Friday, Iyengar admitted that Maria is indeed upset by the allegations Vinita Kamte leveled against him at a function marking release of her book "To the Last Bullet" here Wednesday.

"He had come to meet me and clarify the circumstances (at the time of the 26/11 terror attacks last year)," Iyengar said.

She said she will discuss the issue with Chief Minister Ashok Chavan and Home Minister R. R. Patil.

Peeved by the public allegations and also in the book co-authored by Vinita Kamte and Vinita Deshmukh, Maria has reportedly threatened to quit unless the government clarified the issue.

Maria was manning the Mumbai Police Control Room at the time of the attacks.

Among other things, Vinita Kamte has raised questions over the circumstances leading to her husband's death, and said that the police did not co-operate with her, compelling her to invoke the Right to Information Act to get at the truth.

This is the second public instance of a high-ranking officer of Mumbai police expressing unhappiness at some police officials' response in the Mumbai terror attacks, a year after 10 Pakistanis killed 166 people in the bloody mayhem that lasted for 60 hours.

Last week, former Mumbai police commissioner Hasan Gafoor - who is now Director-General of Police (Housing) - had claimed that several top officers did not obey his instructions during the crisis.

However, following an uproar by some senior officials who threatened to sue him, Gafoor later retracted his statements.

Another widow, Kavita Karkare, wife of the slain former Anti-Terrorist Squad chief Hemant Karkare, has recently revealed that the bullet-proof vest worn by her husband during the terror attacks was missing.

This compelled Home Minister P. Chidambaram to tender an apology two days ago (Nov 25) during a televised interview.