Was Hemant Karkare A Brutal, Inhuman Torture Machine?

Was Hemant Karkare a brutal, inhuman torture machine? Did he act illegally to prove the theory of Saffron Terrorism? Was he a puppet of the congress party’s political leaders? Did he arrest and inhumanly tortured innocent citizens to falsely implicate them in the theory of Saffron Terrorism?

Sadhvi Pragya’s statements on this have created a political storm. People who suffered because of Saffron Terrorism and people who suffered because of 26/11 have divergent views.

But what is the fact?

I am putting lot of information in front of you to decide. This analysis does not show any political inclination or any religious bias. You read it and you decide.

I have done more than three years of research on 26/11 and I collected a lot of information from various sources. I am writing a blog “Failed Journey of Saffron Terrorism” and the following details are from the same blog.

Home Ministry Under-Secretary Mr. Mani in his book – Hindu Terrorism.

Home Ministry Under-Secretary Mr. Mani has written in his book “Hindu Terrorism”. He has said, one day in 2006 he got a call from the home minister’s office asking him to come to see Home Minister immediately. Since all his seniors were out of the office and he was the senior most officer, he went to the Minister, Mr. Shivraj Patil’s chamber, who was Home Minister. There were two more people in the chamber before Mr. Mani went. One was Madhya Pradesh chief minister Mr. Digvijay Singh and second was a new face to Mr. Mani. Digvijay Singh introduced the second person as Mr. Hemant Karkare, IPS officer from Maharashtra cadre. Mr. Mani was wondering what a Maharashtra cadre IPS officer Karkare doing here with M.P. chief minister? What is the connection?

Slowly these two started a discussion about Saffron Terrorism, a term totally unheard by Mr. Mani earlier. They were talking about a fire and a small blast in the industrial area in Nanded. Apparently, a small scale manufacturing unit had caught fire and there was a small blast of some industrial gas cylinder. Local police had arrested the owner of the unit, named Mr. Kulkarni. The local police had a suspicion that Kulkarni deliberately set the fire to claim insurance. Mr. Mani could not give any inputs on this case because the Home Ministry had never heard of this incidence.

But Digvijay Singh and Karkare were discussing the possibility of converting this fire and the blast as an act of some sort of Saffron Terrorism. At that time, Mani had no idea what “Saffron Terrorism” was. With the conversation going on between Karkare and Digvijay Singh, Mr. Mani understood that Hemant Karkare did try to arrest Kulkarni for Saffron Terrorism but could not find enough evidence to prove the charges against Mr. Kulkarni and they had to let him go. Basically, Karkare was trying to “FIND” evidence to make arrests for Saffron Terrorism.

While all this was going on, home minister Shivraj Patil was sitting in a different area in his office. Being a Home Minister, he was not part of these discussions.

Meaning, UPA government was trying to create a false case on Saffron Terrorism.

No congress party leader has refuted these observations so far. This means Karkare was indeed colluding with Congress leaders to create false charges.

Now let’s check other aspects.

Let’s look into Lt. Colonel Purohit’s arrest

Lt. Colonel Purohit was the active army officer at the time of the arrest. He was not a regular infantry Colonel but was working in the highly sensitive department of Military Intelligence, or popularly known as M.I. The purpose of MI is to gather intelligence within the country and outside the country about the different threat perceptions and neutralize them. It is a very secretive department where only select few are inducted after a thorough invasive background check.

Officers working under this department often have to go deep undercover in the terrorist organization to gather intelligence. This is a very risky job because any small mistake can blow up their cover and they get killed. The undercover officers cannot always choose the “Right” way because, in their world, everything is in the shades of gray. Hence sometimes they may have to cross the lines to earn the trust of the bad people. But they do it for the country.

Their undercover job is so bad that their family never knows where they are, what is their new identity, what is the phone number to call and what is the email to connect. They have no contact with their family for months!!! The family gets the updates from the military only.

Arresting such a decorated and trusted military officer under the changes of terrorism was unbelievable. Arresting a military officer by the civilian authorities is not simple. The local police have to follow the protocols, which are as follows. If the arrest is made outside the military camp then police have to inform military within the stipulated time. If the person of interest is inside the military camp then police have to inform military establishment, give all the details of the case and then Military Police (MP) handover the suspect to the civilian police. In each case, the military would conduct its own internal investigation. But in colonel Purohit’s case, he was detained w/o any warrant (abducted) by Maharashtra ATS headed by Hemant Karkare and military was informed about his arrest after a couple of days.

Colonel Purohit was illegally arrested as follows.

While Colonel Purohit was attending a training course at Panchamarhi, MP, his superior Colonel R. K. Shrivastava issued the travel order for him to go to Delhi on 29th October 2008. Colonel R. K. Shrivastava accompanied him to the Bhopal Airport. But before reaching Bhopal airport, Colonel Shrivastava took away cell phone from Colonel Purohit and did not give him air tickets. It was Colonel Shrivastava who did the check in at the airport. After check in, Colonel Shrivasta told Colonel Purohit that they were going to Mumbai and not to Delhi. After hearing this, Colonel Purohit asked for the cell phone to inform his wife but Colonel Shrivastava threatened him for using the cell phone. As per the military practice, if the travel plan is changed then a new travel order has to be issued. In this case, the earlier order was to reach Delhi but it was changed to Mumbai, and as such, a new order should have been issued but his official travel order was not changed! If it was official business then why so much secrecy?

After reaching Mumbai airport late in the evening, Colonel Purohit was pushed into a private vehicle and was driven to a bungalow in Khandala. Hemant Karkare and his ATS team were waiting there. Hemant Karkare, Colonel Shrivastav, ATS deputy chief Parambir Singh (IPS) and his staff tortured Colonel Purohit beyond third degree and in a very inhuman way for a week. He broke several bones and ruptured several tissues. Finally, on 8th November 2008, Maharashtra ATS formally announced the arrest of Colonel Purohit.

Please watch the video of Colonel Purohit’s wife narrating how her husband was tortured by the ATS team led by Hemant Karkare.

In 2013 Colonel Purohit himself wrote a letter to the Human Rights Commission about the illegal detention and torture and copy of this letter was sent to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Please see this news clip.

Please read the ACTUAL HANDWRITTEN LETTER written by Colonel Purohit to the Human Rights Commission.
Warning – This letter has a very graphic and disturbing description of the torture hence read it only if you feel comfortable.

Shocking letter by Colonel Purohit to Human Rights Commission exposes how he was tortured

No one from NHRC or PMO cared to investigate the charges leveled by Lt. Colonel Purohit. Why????

Otherwise very active NHRC chose to keep quiet.

Please note, in his letter Colonel Purohit says, at one point of time, his boss Colonel R. K. Shrivastava and Hemant Karkare talked about parading his mother, wife, and daughter naked in front of everyone. They also talked about bombing his house to kill his entire family. This was of course done to terrorize Colonel Purohit so as to get his confession but this shows how low Colonel R. K. Shrivastava and Hemant Karkare had scooped! Really shameful.

It did not end just with illegal arrest and torture. Karkare raided Lt. Col. Purohit’s house and announced, he recovered RDX from his house in Pune.

Karkare claimed that Lt. Col. Purohit stole the RDX from the military stock.

Now realize the situation here with your common sense. Lt. Col. Purohit is a highly trained military officer who knows about explosive. Would he keep a highly explosive material like RDX at his home where his family lives? Will he risk his neighbors and community, which is mainly Hindu? And he was arrested for supporting Saffron Terrorism?

Army refuted the charges of stealing of RDX from its stock saying Indian military does not use RDX hence they don’t carry any stock.

Then Hemant Karkare changed his story and said, this RDX was seized in a raid conducted by Lt. Col. Purohit in Kashmir and he stole some quantity from this lot. The same was used in the bombing of Samjhauta express, Malegaon bombing and rest was seized from his house in Pune.

Military again said, that raid in Kashmir was a joint operation and many military officers, local police officers were in that raid. It was not just Lt. Col. Purohit that was present and every gram of seized RDX is accounted for and there is no missing quantity.

What does this show? Was Karkare fabricating the evidence to implicate Lt. Col Purohit?

If this is true then it is completely deplorable. Treating an army officer in this way is disheartening. It is a shame and disgrace to the police uniform.

Karkare is dead but Prarambir Singh and Col. R. K. Shrivastav are still alive. They must be arrested based on Col. Purohit’s charges of torture and must be investigated.

Please note, Sadhvi Pragya too has leveled similar charges of torture against Karkare.

Now the following are my views.

If multiple people level charges on Karkare about false cases, illegal arrests, collecting illegal evidence and brutal torture charges then it must be investigated.

If these charges are found correct then his Ashok Chakra medal, his status of heroic death, his pension and all his medals must be stripped posthumously.

Similar punishment must be given to all the other police officers who were involved in the torture.

Col. R. K. Shrivastav should also be court marshaled and punished.

No one is above the law and no one should be treated softly because they died in action or they are rich and powerful.

Kishor Katti.