The arrest of a deputy superintendent of police (DSP) of dreaded counter-insurgency force in Kashmir on charges of harbouring terrorists has blown the lid off the police-militant nexus in the insurgency-hit region.
Davinder Singh, who had joined the J&K police in the early 1990s as an assistant sub-inspector, rose quickly to the rank of a DSP in addition to earning the prestigious police medal for gallantry ostensibly for his anti-militancy duties.
On January 11, he was apprehended by the police when was escorting two militants in a car along the Srinagar-Jammu highway, en route to Delhi or Chandigarh.
Sources told Deccan Herald that after Singh's arrest, security agencies have decided to carry scrutiny of some more suspects.
“National Investigation Agency (NIA), Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Military Intelligence (MI) sleuths with the help of Electronic Surveillance Unit (ESU) have been put on alert and asked to scrutinise the call details of some suspected policemen including some officers,” they said and added the agencies have been asked to thoroughly investigate the cases of militant-cop nexus.
Sources said the arrested DSP has been interrogated by the sleuths of central probe agencies and he has revealed names of a few more police officers - retired as well as in-service - who were part of this nexus. "Singh had been harbouring terrorists in his home in Jammu and also in his ancestral home in Tral town of Kashmir's Pulwama district. It is to be seen who were his accomplices in this crime," they added.
Singh's name had first appeared in the grey zone after Afzal Guru, who was hanged in 2013 for his role in Parliament attack in 2001, leveled serious allegation against him during his defence in the trial court. But back then both the J&K police and the intelligence agencies had dismissed those allegations as a figment of a terrorist's mind.
In his written affidavit and through statements carried in the media, Afzal Guru had alleged that Singh had forced him to carry the Parliament attack terrorists to Delhi, hire a flat there and also buy a second-hand white ambassador car for the use of the terrorists.
A senior police officer privy to latest developments said the arrested DSP's role in helping militants to carry different attacks was being thoroughly probed.
"After his arrest, while he was carrying a dreaded terrorist Naveed Baba in his car, Singh has told interrogators that he had harboured the terrorist in his Srinagar residence before the travel. There is a likelihood that some more police personnel may have been involved in this nexus," he added.
However, the officer said, subversion of this kind was possible in a “large force” like the Jammu and Kashmir police.
It is not for the first time that cop-militant nexus in Kashmir has come to the fore. In August 2012, police arrested a constable, Abdul Rashid Shigan, who was involved in 13 terror attacks in Srinagar between February 2010 to June 2012. Among Shigan’s alleged targets were fellow J&K Police officers, activists of the then ruling National Conference party, suspected informants, moderate separatists and paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force camps.
Similarly in 2002, the arrest of SHO Ghulam Rasool Wani and constable Abdul Ahad of Sogam police station in the Kupwara district revealed a sinister militant-policemen nexus that had thrived for three years and was responsible for many killings, including the then minister of state for Home, Mushtaq Ahmad Lone's.
