“I wrote this book not only as a wife who lost her husband but also as an educated person who needed to throw light on the lapses in our system”

26/11 martyr Ashok Kamte’s widow Vinita has painstakingly chronicled the events leading to her valiant husband’s death in last year’s Mumbai terror attacks, thoroughly conducting her own probe.

Her book To The Last Bullet released Wednesday at Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel, which itself was one of the sites of the terror attacks, undoubtedly slams the police and is sure to embarrass the government.

Till date, Vinita maintains that her husband Kamte did not get any help for about 40 minutes after being shot by the terrorists. Additional police commissioner Ashok Kamte was killed with two other top officers Hemant Karkare and Vijay Salaskar in the attacks.

“If only help had arrived earlier, the three officers including my husband could have been saved,” she said at the book launch. “I wanted to put his life and sacrifice in a proper perspective it deserves. It was not easy to take this decision because it was a question of whether I should speak out against a force which my husband was a part of and throwing light on the shortcomings of what happened during 26/11.”

Vinita, 43, used information from right to information requests, meetings with eyewitnesses, police control room records and post mortem reports.

I join Vinita and her two sons in mourning the death of the man who indeed died a hero’s death that night.