No need for me to lie on Karkare call: Digvijaya

New Delhi:  Congress leader Digvijaya Singh continues to insist he did speak to Hemant Karkare hours before the chief of the Anti-Terror Squad in Maharashtra was killed during 26/11.   

"I am not a liar, there is no need for me to lie that I had spoken to (slain Maharashtra ATS chief) Hemant Karkare," Singh, who has recently been made party in-charge of poll-bound Assam, told reporters in Guwahati.

Digvijaya said he had requested the Telecom Ministry to get the record of the call between him and the police officer from its centre in Pune.

Singh said that he had sent a request in this regard to the General Manager of BSNL at Bhopal but "has got in writing from them that they cannot provide details of this number as the records are kept only for 12 months".

He said he had spoken to Karkare from his number registered in Bhopal.

Earlier, speaking on NDTV's The Buck Stops Here, Singh countered the Mumbai police sources' claims that Karkare's phone records showed no evidence of any such call. He said he had asked junior Telecom Minister Sachin Pilot for call records that would prove his statement.

Singh, who is the Congress General Secretary, had said on Monday, "Tomorrow at 2:30pm I will produce the required evidence at a press conference."

However, with call records sealed under the Telegraph Act, Digvijaya Singh cannot access Karkare's records. What he can do is access his own phone records and prove that he had spoken to Karkare. Call records of all police officers were forwarded to the Pradhan Committee which was appointed to look into the police response in the hours after the siege of Mumbai began.

Singh found himself under considerable attack over the weekend after he announced that Karkare shared concerns about death threats from Hindu extremists in a phone conversation before he was killed in 2008 by Pakistani terrorists during India's worst-ever terror attack.

The remarks which implied Hindu groups may have caused Karkare's death forced the Congress to distance itself from Singh, stating that this was his personal opinion.

Karkare's widow, Kavita too showed little patience for Singh's theory. "Such a statement will benefit Pakistan... I want the world to know that Pakistan is behind the attack and not anyone else," she said.

Singh later clarified that he had not stated that Karkare was killed by a Hindu group. He said Karkare was receiving threats because of his investigation into the Malegaon blast which saw right-wing extremists being arrested for allegedly planning and executing the attack. In September 2008, seven people were killed after a bomb placed on a motorcycle exploded in the communally-sensitive town.