Mumbai ex-top cop Rakesh Maria’s book makes startling revelations about conspiracy
Former Mumbai Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria has dropped a bombshell by claiming in his 624-page memoir “Let Me Say It Now” released recently that how there was a bid to dub 26/11 as “Hindu terror”, a phrase coined by the then Home Minister.
But it didn’t happen so as Pakistani terrorist Mohammed Ajmal Kasab was caught alive.
Had Kasab not been caught alive, his body would have been found with an I-card bearing a fictitious Hindu name, writes Maria about the investigation helmed by him in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.
“If all had gone well, he (Kasab) would have been dead with a red string tied around his wrist like a Hindu. We would have found an identity card on his person with a fictitious name: Samir Dinesh Chaudhari, student of Arunodaya Degree and PG College, Vedre Complex, Dilkhushnagar, Hyderabad, 500060, resident of 254, Teachers Colony, Nagarabhavi, Bengaluru,” Maria writes.
“Ramesh Mahale, Prashant Marde and Dinesh Kadam would have been on their way to Hyderabad to find more about him. There would have been screaming headlines in newspapers claiming how Hindu terrorists had attacked Mumbai. Over-the-top TV journalists would have made a beeline for Bengaluru to interview his family and neighbours,” he wrote.
Mahale, Marde and Kadam were senior police officers involved in the 26/11 attack investigation. “But alas, it had not worked that way and here he was, Ajmal Amir Kasab of Faridkot in Pakistan, and I was asking him, Ki karan aya hai? (What are you here for?),” the former IPS officer wrote.
Maria’s book also mentions that Pakistan’s ISI and the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) were bent upon killing Kasab by “hook or by crook” after he was caught alive by ASI Tukaram Ombale.
“As the Joint CP incharge of the Crime Branch, Kasab was now my most esteemed guest. Keeping this enemy alive was my number one priority. Anger and hostility towards Kasab were perceptible. The way the men and officers were reacting to him, I had to personally choose his guards for the entire period he would be with us,” Maria writes in the book.
“The ISI and the Lashkar were bent upon eliminating him by hook or by crook to obliterate the only living evidence of their heinous deed... Specific Intelligence inputs had been received from Central Intelligence agencies that Pakistan was intent on killing Kasab and the Dawood gang had been entrusted with the task,” Maria wrote.
“He seriously believed that Muslims were not allowed to offer namaaz in India and mosques were locked up by the authorities. He felt that the azaan he heard five times a day in the Crime Branch lock-up was just a figment of his imagination. When we came to know of this, I instructed Mahale to take him to the mosque near the Metro Cinema in a vehicle. When he saw the namaaz in progress with his own eyes, he was bewildered. This was not how it was supposed to be!” Maria writes in the book.
In one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in the country’s history, 166 people were killed and over 300 injured as 10 heavily-armed terrorists from Pakistan created mayhem in Mumbai on November 26, 2008.
Kasab, the lone terrorist captured alive, was hanged to death on November 21, 2012.
