Arrested Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Davinder Singh, who was questioned by a National Investigation Agency (NIA) team in Srinagar on Tuesday, has revealed that he had been providing logistics support to militants of the Hizbul Mujahideen for the past three years.
He dropped hints at the involvement of other officials of the J&K police.
With the Union Home Ministry likely to hand over the case to the NIA and shift him to Delhi for further interrogation, the J&K police’s Special Investigation Team (SIT) is relentlessly acting on the inputs provided by the police officer and carrying out multiple searches in several pockets of south Kashmir to arrest more militants and bust the support network.
“Preliminary investigation suggests that the DSP had been providing logistics support, including safe passage to militants from one district to another, for the past three years. So far, the police officer seemed to be connected with the Hizbul Mujahideen outfit only,” a police official told The Hindu .
Sources in the SIT said the DSP hinted at more officials of the police department “being involved in dubious activities”, and the police dragnet being widened.
‘Probe under way’
“A fair and impartial probe is under way to unearth all links of the officer,” a Srinagar-based police spokesman said.
SIT officials, sources said, were poring over the files of the Parliament attack, which was believed to have been masterminded by a non-local Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) “commander”, Gazi Baba, who was able to set up links with local people in Kashmir and lived in the congested and secured locality of Qamarwari for many years.
DSP Singh was part of the special anti-militancy squad Special Operations Group in 2002 and was named by Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, in a letter to his lawyer, and suggested that another Parliament attacker Mohammad was taken to Delhi on the directions of the police officer.
House scanned
The officer’s three-storey under-construction house at Indira Nagar, sharing a boundary wall with the 15 Corps headquarters in Srinagar, has been scanned multiple times in the past three days “for more clues and information.” Adviser to Lt. Governor C.P. Murmu, Farooq Khan, also in-charge of the J&K Home department, warned against questioning the role of the J&K police.
“The police are doing a great job to establish peace in J&K. All organisations have black sheep and the DSP was one. The credit goes to the police officers who identified him and arrested him and unearthed the whole conspiracy. One should bear in mind that hundreds of policemen have laid down their lives in the fight against terrorism,” said Mr. Khan.
The police on Tuesday denied that the officer was conferred the President’s Police Medal for Gallantry.
However, the Union Home Ministry did award him the ‘Police Medal for Meritorious Service’ on August 15, 2019.
