NIA Raids Multiple Places In Kashmir Over Arrest Of Suspended DSP

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Sunday conducted raids at several locations in connection with the arrest of Davinder Singh, the suspended Deputy Superintendent of Jammu and Kashmir Police. Singh was arrested for helping two terrorists travel out of the newly formed Union Territory and has been sent to 15-day custody of the NIA. Multiple teams of the investigating agency fanned in various parts of south Kashmir and carried out the searches at some private offices and residences, they said.

The searches come days after NIA officers interrogated all the accused arrested in the case.

Besides Singh, the others arrested were: Syed Naveed Mushtaq Ahmed alias Naveed Babu, who is a self-styled commander of Hizbul Mujahideen, Rafi Ahmed Rather and Irfan Shafi Mir, who claims to be an advocate.

They were arrested from the Srinagar-Jammu National Highway near Qazigund in South Kashmir. Later, Naveed’s brother, Syed Irfan Ahmed, was also arrested on January 23 after he was brought from Punjab.

He was in constant touch with his brother and had asked him to look for an accommodation in Chandigarh where they could escape the harsh winters months of Kashmir. He had visited the neighbouring country five times on an Indian passport.

Role in Parliament attack?

Was arrested Jammu and Kashmir Police officer Davinder Singh involved in the 2001 Parliament attack? This is the question that the security agencies would be probing, the latest report on Thursday said. According to a media report, Jammu and Kashmir Police chief Dilbagh Singh said that nobody is above the law and everything can be probed. The remark gains significance amid the ongoing probe by the National Investigation Agency. Now-suspended Deputy Superintendent of Police, Davinder Singh was arrested on Saturday in a car along with three Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists. The links between Davinder Singh and the 2001 Parliament attack are not new. Earlier, Afzal Guru, the prime accused in the case had alleged that it was Singh who had sent him to Delhi and made other key arrangements just before the attack.

The letter

In a letter to his lawyer, which is being widely quoted by media reports, Afzal Guru had claimed that Davinder Singh tortured him and was forced to help one of the terrorists that carried out the attack on Parliament under pressure from Singh. The letter is detailed in Arundhati Roy’s book ‘The Hanging of Afzal Guru and the strange case of the attack on Indian Parliament’. In the letter, Guru had said that he started facing trouble after his failed separatist bid and returned to Kashmir. He had written in his letter how the STF started torturing him. He had claimed that it was the STF that provided him with the phone that was found on the body of one of the terrorists killed in the attack.