Srinagar
A senior Indian police official posted in Indian occupied Kashmir (IoK), who was arrested on Saturday for allegedly transporting arms and Kashmiri freedom fighters, had taken 1.2 million Indian rupees to take the fighters to Delhi, Indian media has reported.
Sources in the Indian police informed the Times of India that Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Davinder Singh had allegedly taken 1.2 million in return for helping the fighters with a reconnaissance mission.
DSP Singh had worked for the police for decades and was a member of an elite counter-insurgency force in the disputed territory. He was apprehended late on Saturday when his vehicle was pulled over at a police checkpoint south of Srinigar, the region’s main city.
“The fast-moving car was stopped and searched. Two wanted freedom fighters and our officer […] and a third person were arrested in the operation,” Kashmir police chief Vijay Kumar told reporters.
Kumar said police and intelligence agencies were questioning Singh. Security forces recovered guns and ammunition from several locations in the follow up to the arrests, including from Singh’s residence in Srinagar.
Hours after the four men were detained, police killed three freedom fighters in an alleged gunfight in southern Kashmir’s Tral district, where the arrested fighters were based.
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Singh had risen steadily through the ranks of the Kashmir security apparatus during his career and was last year awarded a medal by the Indian president for his service.
But years earlier he was accused of forcing a man to help armed militants travel to New Delhi in a deadly attack on the Indian parliament in 2001.
Also read: ‘No hopes’ for Kashmiris as Indian parties, analysts lambaste BJP’s foreign envoys tour Singh acknowledged in 2006 he had tortured his accuser, Mohammad Afzal Guru, while he was in custody, but the claims were not taken seriously by investigators. Guru was later convicted for his alleged part in the attack and hanged.
