In a startling revelation, Retired Assistant Police Commissioner Samsher Khan Pathan has claimed former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh “destroyed” a mobile phone seized from the 26/11 terror attack convict Mohammed Ajmal Kasab. According to Pathan, Param Bir Singh – who back then was posted as a DIG with the anti-terrorism squad, took Ajmal Kasab’s mobile phone from the custody of a constable and never returned it. Param Bir Singh did so without intimating his seniors, thus raising suspicion on the motives behind such an unwarranted and brazen seizure by a man who is known to have political connections and who during his tenure as a senior police functionary remained a loyal pet of many political masters.
In a written complaint to the Mumbai Police Commissioner in July, the former ACP said that the then-senior PI Mali of the DB Marg police station had informed him that he had recovered a mobile phone from Kasab, which was kept with the police station’s police constable Kamble. Subsequently, Pathan claimed that Param Bir Singh had then arrived at the signal at Girgaum Chowpatty, where Kasab was apprehended and took the phone with him.
Mumbai | Retired ACP Shamsher K Pathan in a letter to Mumbai Police Commissioner in July 2021 alleged that "during 26/11 terrorist attacks, #ParamBirSingh , the then DIG ATS, confiscated terrorist #AjmalKasab phone, ensuring that phone never appeared during the probe or trial" pic.twitter.com/6uzFloTavC
— TOI Mumbai (@TOIMumbai) November 26, 2021
In his complaint, Pathan said Singh should have handed the phone over to Ramesh Mahale, the investigating officer of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack case, but he “destroyed the vital piece of evidence.” Furthermore, the former ACP was quoted by Times of India as saying, “There was a possibility that a probe of that phone would have unearthed the involvement of a few highly placed persons within India, who were hand in glove with them and facilitating the attack on our country.” When a batchmate of Pathan, N R Mali tried recovering the phone from Param Bir Singh, he was shouted at and told to get out of the police officer turned absconder’s office.
Read more: Hemant Karkare – The man who knew too much
Param Bir Singh is currently facing extortion charges, and since October, the man has been absconding. Recently, on November 17, Param Bir Singh was declared a proclaimed offender in an extortion case by Mumbai’s Esplanade court. The court set a deadline for Singh, asking the authorities to declare him an absconder if he did not respond to their summons in the next 30 days. Fearing such a label, Singh made a sudden appearance on Thursday morning before the crime branch of the Mumbai Police and promised to join the extortion investigations underway against him.
In 2008, the focus before the 26/11 attacks was on the Malegaon bomb blast, in which the Congress tried to spin a false narrative of Hindu terror engulfing India. 26/11 came at a time when the Congress party was trying to cook a malicious and false narrative of ‘Hindutva terror’. The Pakistani terrorists who attacked Mumbai were wearing kalawas – the sacred threads worn by Hindus, on their wrists. Why were they wearing these threads? Was the then Indian government conspiring with Pakistan to invent Hindu terror, or did Pakistan take a cue from the UPA’s book of inventing Hindutva terror in India, and decide to act independently? Param Bir Singh taking illegal custody of a Pakistani terrorist’s mobile phone is indeed an indication that the UPA government of the time was up to no good.
