Pulling up additional chief secretary (home) Amitabh Rajan for a shoddy probe and police commissioner Rakesh Maria for flouting RTI rules, the state information commission has ordered a judicial inquiry into call records of the 26/11 terror attacks.
The order was a shot in the arm for Vinita Kamte, the widow of additional police commissioner Ashok Kamte who was killed during the attacks. Vinita has alleged that help did not reach her husband on time due to infighting and rivalry in the force, resulting in his death. She has been fighting a lonely battle seeking the call record details under the RTI Act, and had complained to the commission that she was not given accurate documents.
State chief information commissioner (CIC) Ratnakar Gailwad gave the chief secretary a directive for the order on July 7.
After an inquiry, Rajan had stated that two sets of call records of the south region control room given to Kamte were correct in their original content. According to him, the public information officer provided a xerox copy of a xerox copy that had changes in it.
Vinita had sought call records of the south channel, the two walkie-talkies used by her husband and the log of the main control rooms among other details. She was given two sets of records of the south channel and both had discrepancies.
The commission sided with Kamte's argument that Rajan's inquiry had simply upheld the views of those who were themselves under the scanner. It pulled up Rakesh Maria for not providing the information in 2009, which was against the RTI Act, and for not attending hearings.
I stand vindicated: Kamte's widow
"With this order I stand vindicated. It supports all I have been saying all these years. It is not me alone, all of us want to know what happened in that lane. It doesn't give me pleasure to do this. My husband was proud of the force, but I have been forced by the system to do this. Because of the way they avoided dialogue and kept the truth from us, we had to resort to the RTI," Vinita told dna.
Chief secretary J S Saharia said, "We will get the order examined and take a decision on it." Neither Rajan nor Maria responded to calls and messages.
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