The Jammu and Kashmir Police on Sunday said that decorated police officer Davinder Singh, who was apprehended along with two top Hizbul Mujahedeen militants on Saturday afternoon, will be treated and probed just like any other militant.
“The arrested officer will be treated and investigated the way militants are,” IGP J&K Police Vijay Kumar said.
The police detained the officer, along with two militants when the trio was travelling in a vehicle on Srinagar-Jammu highway at Wanpow, he said. "The circumstances under which he was arrested... is a heinous crime. That is why he is being treated at par with the militants," he said. "Interrogation is underway."
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When a reporter mentioned that Davinder had confessed during an interview that he had asked Afzal Guru to ferry a man named Mohammad to New Delhi, Kumar said the police would look into it.
Davinder had a robust record in anti-militancy operations and had honoured with the gallantry award in 2017. Currently, he was posted as DSP, Anti-hijacking, at the sensitive Srinagar International Airport. Recently, Singh was seen in government-released pictures, receiving foreign diplomates on Thursday.
The arrest assumes importance as the officer, according to sources, was ferrying the militants out of the Valley to Delhi. Deputy Inspector General of South Kashmir Atul Goyal was supervising the operation which led to their arrest.
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Naveed Babu, a special police officer (SPO), who had deserted the police force in 2017, was among the two Hizbul Mujahedeen commanders. Back then, the police had said that Babu decamped with four weapons. The former SPO shot to the limelight after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government scrapped Jammu and Kashmir's autonomy and statehood in August 2019. Police had accused Babu of killing non-Kashmiri civilians and setting ablaze an apple-laden truck in Shopian district of south Kashmir in October. He had been threatening apple growers not to send their produce to Indian markets.
The police were miffed with such actions and had put up posters with Babu’s pictures in different areas of Shopian, requesting the people to share information about him.
In 2013, political parties in the Valley had demanded a probe into the circumstances leading to Guru’s arrest. Engineer Rashid, the then Langate MLA, had demanded the government ''constitute a commission to probe the role of J-K Police officers in setting-up Afzal Guru''.
Referring to a letter written by Afzal to his lawyer Sushil Kumar, which was published in the local press, the parties had demanded a probe into these allegations.
Afzal had written to his lawyer in 2004 when he was lodged in Ward no 6 (High-Security Ward) Jail number 1 of Tihar. In the letter, Afzal had explained how "DSP Davinder Singh", the then deputy superintendent of police, J-K Police's Special Operations Group at Humhama, Jammu & Kashmir, asked him to "take Mohammad", a co-accused in the Parliament attack case, "to Delhi, rent a flat for his stay and purchase a car for him".
