The ar­rest of Deputy Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice of Jammu and Kash­mir -Davin­der Singh while trav­el­ling with two Kash­miri mil­i­tants in South Kash­mir, on way to Delhi, is not go­ing to be di­gested eas­ily by those who have been fol­low­ing the deeds of the po­lice of­fi­cer and his deputies in the last decade. Pun­jab po­lit­i­cal party -Dal Khalsa, which keeps an eye on Kash­mir has ques­tioned the role of the po­lice of­fi­cer, once dec­o­rated by the Pres­i­dent of In­dia.

THE WHOLE EPISODE IS FISHY and jus­tice-seek­ing peo­ple in In­dia and the world mon­i­tor­ing de­vel­op­ments in Kash­mir need to know the truth, com­mented Dal Khalsa chief Harpal Singh Cheema, in the par­ty’s of­fi­cial re­ac­tion to the de­ten­tion of Jammu and Kash­mir po­lice of­fi­cer Davin­der Singh.

Dal Khalsa pres­i­dent Harpal Singh Cheema, in a state­ment is­sued here to­day, said that his party be­lieved that the ar­rest of DSP Davin­der Singh, for­mer counter-in­sur­gency of­fi­cer of J and K po­lice along­side two “mil­i­tants”, one of whom was in­volved in the killing of mi­grant labour­ers last Oc­to­ber has opened a Pan­do­ra’s box which the Jammu and Kash­mir po­lice and ad­min­is­tra­tion will find dif­fi­cult to put the lid on.

“Was Davin­der Singh a dou­ble agent mint­ing money from both sides? Was he a mole in the po­lice work­ing for a third agency? Was he a hero of the state that used him for overt and covert op­er­a­tions? Who were his se­nior han­dlers and why they haven’t pro­tected him at the time of his ar­rest? What was the re­al­ity be­hind Afza­l’s point­ing fin­ger to­wards him?”

In the last 72 hours since his ar­rest, while the so­cial me­dia re­mained abuzz about the role of Davin­der Singh, skele­tons from the past started pour­ing out. He is the same po­lice of­fi­cer about whom Afzal Gu­ru’s coun­sel had ap­prised the court through a let­ter be­fore be­ing sent to the gal­lows, but the court had not taken cog­nizance of the said let­ter.  The let­ter talked about how Afzal Guru was forced to take a per­son to Delhi and also how Davin­der Singh and his deputy Shanty Singh had tor­tured him in po­lice cus­tody.

In an in­ter­view to Par­vaiz Bhukari, quoted by Arund­hati Roy in her 13 ques­tions for De­cem­ber 13, Davin­der Singh proudly says, “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. That was the pro­ce­dure those days and we did pour petrol in his ass and gave him elec­tric shocks. But I could not break him. He did not re­veal any­thing to me de­spite our hard­est pos­si­ble in­ter­ro­ga­tion. We tor­tured him enough for Ghazi Baba but he did not break. He looked like a “bhondu” those days, what you call a “chootya” type. And 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.”

Ex­press­ing strong ap­pre­hen­sions about the sin­is­ter mo­tive of the con­tro­ver­sial cop es­cort­ing mil­i­tants, the party leader asked, “Was it part of yet an­other covert op­er­a­tion?”

The sud­den ar­rest of Davin­der Singh raises more ques­tions than it an­swers.

“Was he a dou­ble agent mint­ing money from both sides? Was he a mole in the po­lice work­ing for a third agency? Was he a hero of the state that used him for overt and covert op­er­a­tions? Who were his se­nior han­dlers and why they haven’t pro­tected him at the time of his ar­rest? What was the re­al­ity be­hind Afza­l’s point­ing fin­ger to­wards him?”

Jus­tice-lov­ing peo­ple around the world who are mon­i­tor­ing de­vel­op­ments in Kash­mir and the peo­ple of In­dia need to know an­swers to all such puz­zling ques­tions, said Harpal Singh Cheema and de­manded an im­par­tial and trans­par­ent probe into the en­tire role of Davin­der Singh as an of­fi­cer in charge of counter-in­sur­gency op­er­a­tions.

Barely a few days back, he was part of a photo-op at the Sri­na­gar air­port re­ceiv­ing en­voys of 18 for­eign mis­sions on a state-guided tour of the val­ley. Can there be a big­ger com­pro­mise than this on the se­cu­rity of diplo­mats?