By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
Patna: Notwithstanding the low coverage or blackout by the mainstream media of the book Who Killed Karkare?, it has reached far and wide. It was this book that influenced a Bihar politician so much so that he moved the Supreme Court for a fresh probe into the killing of the then Maharashtra ATS Chief Hemant Karkare during 26/11.
Radhakant Yadav, a former MLA from Madhepura in Bihar, filed a PIL seeking constitution of an independent fact-finding committee, headed by a sitting or a retired judge of the Supreme Court, to look into the events before Karkare’s killing. He submitted that there was an abject failure of the state in protecting the citizens of the country from terrorists, including the death of officers like ATS chief Karkare. He had also contended that the entire Mumbai terror attack should not be seen as single episode but two different attacks.
A bench of Justice B. Sudershan Reddy and Justice Surinder Singh Nijjar rejected Yadav’s PIL on May 12 but gave him the liberty to move the high court.
Asked what provoked him to file the PIL in Karkare’s case, Yadav said: “I was shaken by the book Who Killed Karkare? – The real face of terrorism in India, written by a former Inspector General of Police SM Mushrif.”
Also in his petitioner Yadav had pointed to the book, which said the government explanation given for the ATS chief’s death was not logical and not believable.
A 70-something Lohiaite, Yadav spent about Rs 80,000 on the PIL.
Hemant Karkare was killed during the Mumbai terror attacks on November 26, 2008. Karkare had investigated and exposed Hindutva terrorists who were responsible for several blasts between 2003 and 2008. Karkare came to know about the involvement of political and religious leaders and was only inches away from arresting some of them but he was killed, Yadav had maintained in the PIL.