Arrest of Davinder Singh exposes weaknesses of investigation into
terror cases. Despite allegation by Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, his
role was never probed. Similarly, local links behind 26/11 attack have remained
uninvestigated.
On December 13 in 2001, when India was blasting away English
bowlers in a test match played in Ahmedabad, five terrorists attacked the
highest seat of Indian democracy, Parliament, in New Delhi. Nine security
personnel were killed. All five terrorists shot. Afzal Guru, a surrendered
terrorist, was arrested the next day and declared the mastermind of the
Parliament attack. He was found guilty and was executed in 2013.
With Afzal Guru’s hanging, the Parliament attack case met its
closure for the most people. But for some, that was not the logical end as the
point-person named by Afzal Guru in connection with the Parliament attack case
was never examined, his role never probed.
That point person was Davinder Singh, a deputy superintendent of
police in Jammu and Kashmir. Afzal Guru had named him, first as the police
officer who tortured him months before the Parliament attack, and then as the
man who tasked him with the job of ferrying one Mohammad to Delhi days before
December 13 incident. Mohammad was later identified as one of the terrorists
who attacked Parliament and shot dead in retaliatory action.
Now, 18 years later, the Parliament attack case has practically
reopened. Davinder Singh was arrested in Kashmir on Saturday, was caught
red-handed ferrying two "wanted terrorists. This is not only a huge
embarrassment to the security establishment in Jammu and Kashmir and in New
Delhi, but also exposes the fallacy of criminal investigation by Indian
agencies and quick-fix approach of the government to bring closure of a serious
issue in public eye.
WHO IS DAVINDER SINGH?
Davinder Singh might had been arrested in 2001 for his alleged
nexus with terrorists and torture of civilians in Kashmir or in 2004 when his
role cropped up in connection with the Parliament attack after being named by
Afzal Guru, the mastermind of the terror act.
But in the first instance of alleged torture -- Davinder Singh had
been transferred from his post of DSP in the Special Operations Group in Badgam
in central Kashmir to his original rank as inspector in the state intelligence
unit in February 2001 10 months before the Parliament attack happened. His
shifting from SOG to state intelligence and reversion in rank happened in the
wake of charges of custodial deaths under his command.
Davinder Singh’s rise in the Jammu and Kashmir Police has a little
story of its own. Reports from the past suggest that after the formation of the
Special Task Force in Jammu and Kashmir, Davinder Singh volunteered to join it.
The STF had been carved out from Jammu and Kashmir Police in the
wake of rising militancy there. The STF was later renamed as the SOG, which
Davinder Singh had joined as a sub-inspector. But in six years’ time, he rose
through the ranks to head SOG in Badgam.
He was particularly known for his extraordinary methods of
interrogation. Edited by author-activist Arundhati Roy, a 2006 book, The
Hanging of Afzal Guru and the Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian
Parliament, called for probing the role of Davinder Singh in the 2001 terror
attack.
Commenting on Davinder Singh, the book says: The other character
who is rapidly emerging from the shadowy periphery and wading onto centre-stage
is Deputy Superintendent of Police Davinder Singh of the STF. He is the man
Afzal has named as the police officer who held him in illegal detention and
tortured him in the STF camp at Humhama in Srinagar, only a few months before
the Parliament Attack. In a letter to his lawyer Sushil Kumar, Afzal says that
several of the calls made to him and Mohammad, (the man killed in the Attack)
can be traced to Davinder Singh.
At another place, the book quotes Davinder Singh from an interview
with a freelance journalist as saying, I did interrogate and torture him
[Afzal] at my camp for several days. And we never recorded his arrest in the
books anywhere. His description of torture at my camp is true I had a
reputation for torture, interrogation and breaking suspects. If anybody came
out of my interrogation clean, nobody would ever touch him again. He would be
considered clean for good by the whole department.
Source: India
Today– 13 January 2020
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