Click to play videoMumbai: Additional Commissioner Of Police, Mumbai, Ashok Kamte was one of India's best, and most promising police officer.
Known for direct action and integrity, Kamte earned respect as the police chief of Solapur in Maharashtra.
But the supercop's glittering career was brutally cut short when he lost his life fighting terrorists in the Mumbai attacks.
"I never imagined Ashok falling in this situation. He was too good with the guns, too good. He thought of everything before doing anything. He always said, after he was in the police, I am the toughest. Toughest. I am not going to let anything get in the way of it," says Kamte's mother Prem Kamte.
Nothing describes ACP Kamte better than the word tough. He was a supercop, a man and a third generation policeman who feared no one.
"When he was a tiny little boy, he had an air gun. He went to the mandir (temple) behind our house, he went there. He must have been six years old. We had given him an air rifle, with tiny pellets which doesn't hurt anyone. He went off to the mandir and he shot the pujari (priest) in the leg. Many people from the mandir came, shouting at me and saying what sort of child you have got. And I said nothing will happen to the pujari, it's only rubber," reminiscences Prem.
He was a police officer who could change the system through action and intelligence.
When the terror attack gripped Mumbai, Kamte wasted no time.
Along with ATS chief Hemant Karkare and encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar, he led from the front.
"Ashok was always used to action. I spoke to him just before we went to tackle the terrorists. He said where he was going. I said, "Well be careful, I hope to see you tomorrow for a drink". He said yes dad we'll meet for a drink tomorrow," reveals Kamte's father, Colonel (retired) Marutirao Kamte.
But that was not to be as Kamte and his fellow officers were shot down fighting for Mumbai, at the frontline of the city's terrible tryst with terror.
"At 0130 hrs IST in the morning my servant wakes me up and tells me he's dead. I became like a dummy. Like a solid rock. I still don’t believe he has gone. And I'll never believe it. I can’t. I'll always feel like he'll walk in," says Prem.
Supercop Kamte was also Kamte the loving son, and a loving husband - a man who meant so much too so many.
"Knowing the kind of man he was, so in love with his job and encounters, I feel this is the best way that god could have taken him," adds Prem.
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