The Mumbai Police reacted with outrage and disbelief on Wednesday to the controversial comments by Union Minister A R Antulay over the circumstances leading to state ATS chief Hemant Karkare's death on 26 Several top officers who were involved in the counter-terror operations said there was "nothing fishy" and there was no question of an internal conspiracy."These comments are not even worth talking about. There was absolutely nothing fishy involved and it's madness to even suggest such a thing might have transpired," said one top IPS officer who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the controversy and the fact that Antulay is a Maharashtra politician."Karkare was one of the finest officers in the force, and we were all proud of the work he had done in the ATS, including the Malegaon probe. As a Joint Commissioner of Police, he was in a position to take on-the-spot decisions on his own. Nobody was directing his movements," he added.The police have all along maintained that Karkare, along with ACP Ashok Kamte and encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar, were reacting to the movements of the two terrorists — Ajmal Ameer Kasab and Ismail Khan — who fired indiscriminately at CST railway station before fleeing due to police resistance.According to the Mumbai Police, the three officers decided to rush to help a team led by ACP Sadanand Date, who was injured by the terrorists at Cama Hospital. All three, along with several police constables, got into ACP Shantilal Bhambre's official Toyota Qualis and sped to the spot.Repeating the sequence of events, the IPS officer said, "Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar met near CST station when news came that the terrorists had injured Date at Cama Hospital. The three officers headed towards Cama. It was when they reached near Rang Bhawan that their vehicle was fired at and all three officers were killed."Kasab too, during his interrogation, has allegedly narrated how he and Khan faced stiff resistance from the police chasing them from CST to Girgaum Chowpatty, where they were eventually intercepted.
