Kavita Karkare, widow of slain Maharashtra Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare who was killed during the 26/11 attacks, died of brain haemorrhage at a city hospital here on Monday.
“She was declared brain dead on Monday morning,” a statement from the PD Hinduja Hospital & Medical Research Center at Mahim in south Mumbai where she had been rushed on Saturday morning after she collapsed all of a sudden at Dadar Hindu Colony residence.
She was 57 and is survived two daughters — Jui Navare and Sayali — and son Akash.
According to her family sources, Kavita had vomited and collapsed after her having her breakfast. Her son Akash rushed her in an unconscious condition to PD Hinduja Hospital, where she was admitted to Intensive Care Unit. Despite having been kept on ventilator for quite some time, she did not respond to treatment. The doctors, attending on Kavita, formally declared her brain dead on Monday.
“The two daughters and son have consented to donate their mother Kavita Karkare’s organs for the treatment of needy patients,” the statement from the hospital stated.
Kavita, who was a professor at a BEd college in Mumbai, had given up her teaching job in the recent past.
While her son Akash is pursuing a five year-law course in Pune, her two daughters Jui and Sayali are based abroad. Jui, a software engineer, lives with her husband in Boston, while Sayali holds a post-graduate degree from the london School of Economics. Both the daughters returned to Mumbai on Monday morning.
An IPS officer of 1982 batch, Hemant Karkare was gunned down by Pakistani terrorists near Cama Hospital in Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) in south Mumbai on the night of November 26, 2008. Killed along with at the same spot were the then Additional Commissioner of Police Ashok Kamte and Inspector Vijay Salaskar.
Hemant Karkare was awarded the Ashoka Chakra posthumously on January 26, 2009. It may be recalled that ahead of the first anniversary of the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai, Kavita had accused the then Congress-led DF Government of having failed in rushing reinforcements to help her husband and two other senior police officers in fighting the Pakistani terrorists on the night of November 26, 2008.
Kavita — who never minced words when it came to exposing the chinks in the armoury of the Maharashtra Government in dealing with the 26/11 attacks — had put the Chavan administration in the dock, by saying that she had not got a “concrete answer” as to how her husband died, even nearly one year after he succumbed to the Pakistani terrorists’ bullets.
Having made an issue of the disappearance of the bullet-proof jacket that her late husband wore when he fought in vain the Pakistan terrorists during the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai, Kavita had taken on the establishment, by raising some serious questions relating to the death of her husband and two other senior police officers, and also expressing serious doubts about the security for the common man in the country’s commercial capital.
“... we came to know that Kamte, Karkare, Salaskar were planning strategy in Cama hospital for 40 minutes. They had asked for help, but they couldn't get help in those 40 minutes. Why they could not get help in 40 minutes, nobody is giving me that answer," she had said at a function.
Kavita had also lamented that her wounded husband remained unattended and bleeding for full 40 minutes and that his life could have been saved, had he been taken to the hospital immediately.
