Mumbai, December 23
The mystery behind the missing bulletproof jacket of slain Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare took a new turn today with the sweeper of a government hospital claiming that he had disposed it off long ago.
The statement of the 35-year-old sweeper - Dinesh Lalji Gatar - to a magistrate yesterday, comes more than a year after Karkare and two other senior police officers were killed by Pakistani terrorists during the 26/11 strikes.
"On the night of November 27, after Karkare's body was brought to JJ Hospital for autopsy, I had mistakenly put the jacket along with bio-medical and non-medical waste in polythene bags which was sent to the Deonar dump grounds for disposal," the sweeper said in the statement.
The statement evoked a sharp reaction from Kavita Karkare, wife of the slain officer, who said, "This theory had cropped up now because the government is under pressure. I have lost all hopes to get fair justice in this case. I do not believe in this. The government is under pressure and hence this statement at a late juncture," she said.
The sweeper's statement comes in the wake of a case filed by social activist Santosh Daundkar, seeking a probe into the missing jacket. Earlier, when the government had ordered a probe, police had gone to Deonar grounds to look for the jacket but could not find it.
YP Singh, Daundkar’s lawyer, said: "This was expected. The line of investigation now should be who would benefit from the missing jacket and the missing file of documents empowering police to buy such defective jackets."
— PTI
