Retired Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Shamsher Khan Pathan has alleged that phone recovered from terrorist Ajmal Kasab by former Mumbai Police chief Param Bir Singh was not presented during the probe or trial and he had filed a complaint in this regard to the current Mumbai police commissioner Hemant Nagrale in July this year.
Kasab was one of ten Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists who came to Mumbai via sea route from Pakistan and carried out a series of coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across the city on November 26, 2008. He was caught and was sentenced to death at Yerwada Central Jail in Pune in 2012.
In a letter to the Mumbai Police chief, Pathan said, "During the 26/11 terrorist attacks, Param Bir Singh, the then DIG ATS, confiscated terrorist Ajmal Kasab's phone, ensuring that phone never appeared during the probe or trial." "I wrote a letter regarding this in July this year. He (Param Bir Singh) should be arrested by NIA for the destruction of evidence. He must have sold this recovered evidence to ISIS or may have used the information for extortion," he said.
Meanwhile, Ujjwal Nikam, who was a public prosecutor in the case, said, "I don't have the exact details on this. But I know that Kasab's phone was not there with us during the trial. So non-presentation of the phone, only investigating officers or people concerned can give a response. I am aware that those 10 attackers were distributed in 5 groups and each group had 1 mobile phone, Kasab's phone was not with use during the trial." Nikam further said, "If the phone was with us as evidence during the trial we could have proven even more facts about his association with his Pakistani handlers."
Though Pathan's complaint was submitted four months ago, it was widely circulated on social media on Thursday, the day when Singh appeared before the Mumbai Crime Branch. Pathan, in the complaint, has said the then senior inspector of the DB Marg police station, N R Mali, had informed him that they had recovered a mobile phone from Kasab and the device was handed over to a constable identified only as Kamble.
He alleged that Singh, who was then-DIG (Anti-Terrorism Squad), took the mobile phone from the constable. Singh should have handed over the phone to Ramesh Mahale, the investigating officer of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack case, but he "destroyed the vital piece of evidence", Pathan has claimed in the complaint.
(With inputs from PTI and ANI)
