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My husband died a hero’s death: Vinita Kamte

Meena Menon

It was made out that the 3 officials went into the attack without thinking

“The police should have come out with the true facts much earlier”
“Only the brave were leading from the front”

— Photo: Meena Menon

Vinita Kamte

PUNE: “We are proud of you, you are our hero,” says a small board in the Kamte living room in Pune’s Rakshak Society. A garlanded picture of Ashok Kamte, Additional Commissioner of Police, Mumbai East, who was gunned down by terrorists in the November 26 attack near Cama Hospital is next to it. His ceremonial swords and caps are in front along with a collage of pictures.

In this quiet yet poignant manner, Vinita Kamte, 43, and her two sons mourn the death of a man they believe died a hero’s death that night.

Yet Ms. Kamte, a labour lawyer by training, feels that neither her husband nor the two senior police officers who were killed along with him — Hemant Karkare and Vijay Salaskar — have got their due. “The police should have come out with the true facts much earlier, on the next day, instead of waiting for me to uncover the facts,” she told The Hindu in an interview.

In fact, after the incident, she and her sister who is a practising lawyer, spent several days meeting eye-witnesses and people involved in the Cama Hospital incident and they have come up with some shocking facts. In the police force you need all kinds of people and that day, she says, only the brave were leading from the front. “My husband always carried his AK 47, handling weapons was second nature to him. Once someone asked him why he always carried a weapon and he said in Mumbai you never know what will happen,” recalls Ms. Kamte. He would even carry a weapon to a restaurant, keep one in his bedroom, and he would keep saying he would hate to go down unarmed in the event of an attack.

On that night he was called to the Oberoi Hotel by Police Commissioner Hasan Gafoor, she said. At the last minute he went to the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) and from there to Cama Hospital where he met up with Mr. Karkare and the others at the gate of the hospital. Ms. Kamte believes he was summoned from his residence at Chembur because somewhere the police knew he would deliver the goods. “When I heard the news of his death, the first thing I asked was did he hit back. I was told he shot Kasab and he had injured him in both the hands,” she says.

However, it was made out that the three senior policemen went into the attack quite by coincidence and without any thinking. “I felt these three men along with others had given their lives, don’t make them look like amateurs,” she points out. “My husband fired towards the Cama terrace where the terrorists were firing and that deterred them.”

“That’s why they rushed down. No one else there knew how to handle a weapon like the AK 47. They then spent nearly 40 minutes planning a strategy. It was all dark there and they tried to figure out how to enter Cama and knocked on many doors there. However, there was no help and no reinforcements were sent,” she says, after her own investigations.

Worse still, there were many calls made to the control room by people near the Cama Hospital who saw the two terrorists. Yet no one told these police officers that they were there. Once the jeep carrying Mr. Karkare and the others was in the lane near Cama, they were sitting ducks. Ms Kamte says she is a very private person and was not keen on any publicity. Yet she feels those who did their duty must be projected as such.

“You know, once Ashok had got hurt on his face and did not even go to hospital. He got himself stitched up in office. I did not even know about it till later. That’s the kind of man he was, he would never push his men to the front. He was a one man army,” she says.

“Outside the Cama Hospital, my husband understood the gravity of the situation along with the other officers, and he spoke to someone saying they needed the Army and extra reinforcements. That did not come and, worse, his escort vehicle carrying tear gas shells and ammunition was stopped by a police cordon from going near him and helping out,” she reveals. “That escort car could have saved their lives,” she points out.

Yet after all this, it is being made out that the three officers were impulsive. “I feel such acts of bravery should not be questioned … if anything, question the acts of incompetence,” she says. In fact, Mr. Kamte took a house on rent in Chembur so that he could be in his region and if there was something, his reaction time would be swift.

He was so conscientious, he would ask his seniors permission to go for dinner to South Mumbai, says his wife. His uniform would always be ready so that he could get going in a minute, she recalls. He used to even keep his wireless set in his bedroom at one point. “We used to practice firing with an air gun sometimes, shooting cans. I was surprisingly good at it,” she adds. He was known for his bluntness and often said he was not a politician and there was no need for him to be nice to anyone.

He used to tell his sons Rahul and Arjun to join the Army. In fact, at heart he was more of an armyman than a cop, feels Ms. Kamte.

Yet she attaches no blame to the police. “Despite all their shortcomings, the police caught one terrorist alive,” she says.

But definitely she wants some answers from the authorities on the many questions she has raised. A tough, no nonsense officer, Mr. Kamte had a different side to him at home.

“The kids thought he was very cute and he was really a very attentive father,” she says. She also said he was a perfectionist, he hated anything going wrong. “He had the most gentle heart and was very proud of his uniform,” she adds with pride.

The rooms in the house in Pune have many books on weapons, training and manuals on arms. Mr. Kamte loved weapons, caps, uniforms and badges. His wife has made a collage of all the badges he collected from all over the world including his tenure in Bosnia as part of the Special Forces.

His grandfather Narayanrao Marutirao Kamte was the first Indian inspector general of police. “He’ s a chip of the old block,” she smiles. He won many friends during his year’s tenure at Bosnia and in fact one of them, a police officer, has named his son Ashok, after him.

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