“SM Mushrif’s claims should have been investigated”: Shashi Tharoor on Vijay Wadettiwar’s remarks on 26/11 attacks

Pune (Maharashtra) [India], May 6 (ANI): Amid uproar over Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar’s statement about the killing of former Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare during the 26/11 attack, his party colleague Shashi Tharoor said on Monday that when the Leader of opposition points to something which is an allegation, it should have been seriously investigated because the nation has right to know what happened.

“The matter is extremely serious. Our concern is that when the LoP points to something that is an allegation that has been in the public domain for some time and which featured in a book by the former IG of police, SM Mushrif, who said that the bullets found in Karkare’s body could not have been fired by Ajmal Kasab and that it could have been fired by a police revolver. It seems to me that this allegation should have been seriously investigated. And it is not too late. Because on such an important matter, the nation has every right to know what happened,” Tharoor said.

Further, attacking the then prosecutor and BJP candidate Ujjwal Nikam, Shashi Tharoor said that he had already propagated an unjustified myth that the terrorist was served Biryani in jail.

“We already had known that he (Ujjwal Nikam) had propagated this unjustified myth that the Pakistani terrorist was served Biryani in prison and that is something that shows him in a very poor light. If, indeed he has already revealed his political bias in that moment, then there is every reason to worry whether his political bias had influenced any other of his stands. We are not saying that the allegation is true. We are saying it should be investigated,” he added.

Ajmal Kasab was the only one of the 10 Pakistani terrorists to be caught alive. He was placed in a Mumbai jail for nearly four years and was hanged in Pune in 2012.

Meanwhile, Wadettiwar, the Leader of Opposition in the Maharashtra Assembly, on Sunday, stirred a controversy by claiming that former Mumbai ATS chief Hemant Karkare was “not killed by terrorists during the 26/11 attack but by a police official close to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.”

Nikam dismissed the claims by the Congress leader calling them “baseless” and alleged that the latter just wants to do “Goebbels’ propaganda” making references to Joseph Goebbels who was Hitler’s aide and Nazi Party chief propagandist.

“What allegations are you making? What will Pakistan say? Pakistan has never denied this. because we produced judicial proof. But our man is doing politics. You just want to do propaganda – that too Goebbels’ propaganda. This doesn’t defame Nikam. It defames you,” Nikam said while speaking to ANI on Monday.

After the comments invited wide outrage, Vijay Wadettiwar issued a clarification, saying that those were not his words but had been mentioned in the book authored by SM Mushrif, a former Inspector General of Police, in Maharashtra.

“Those are not my words, I just said what was written in the book by SM Mushrif. Every information was there about the bullet by which Hemant Karkare was shot, it was not the bullet of terrorists,” he said.

Hemant Karkare was the chief of the Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad. He was killed in action during the 2008 Mumbai attacks. In 2009, he was posthumously given the Ashoka Chakra.