Davinder Singh case: NIA raids sarpanch, militant’s houses

Srinagar, Feb 2: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Sunday raided the house of a Hizbul Mujahideen militant who was ferried out of Kashmir by a Jammu and Kashmir Police officer, DSP Davinder Singh, last month.

Official sources said two teams of the NIA, which has taken over the intriguing case of the police officer’s involvement with militant groups in Kashmir, reached Shopian on Sunday.

The NIA teams entered into the house of Lashker-e-Taiba militants Adil Hussain and Sarpanch Tariq Ahmed Mir besides the houses of Over Ground Workers (OGWs) at Maldera in Shopian and Kulgam, the officials said.

Some documents have been seized and these are being analysed, they said.

The NIA had taken over the case of Jammu and Kashmir’s Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Davinder Singh who was caught in south Kashmir while ferrying two militants out of the valley on January 11. The DSP has since been suspended.

While one NIA team went to Zainapora, the other went to Imamsahab in Pulwama, sources said. One of the teams raided the house of Hizb militant Rafi Ahmed in Shopian.

Rafi, alias Maaz Baie, was arrested along with Hizb commander Naveed Babu, Irfan Shafi Mir, a Shopian lawyer and a Hizb logistics man and Davinder Singh, Deputy Superintendent of Police. Sources said Rafi, an IED expert was active as a militant since July 2019.

Naveed Babu, whose real name is Syed Naveed Mushtaq, was a police constable till 2017 when he deserted his post at a Food Corporation of India warehouse in Budgam along with four rifles. He assumed prominence after his involvement in the murder of a truck driver from Rajasthan and fruit trader from Punjab, when traders in Kashmir attempted to defy the lockdown imposed by militants last year.

After the state of Jammu & Kashmir was reorganized and Article 370 nullified, on August 5, militant groups issued threats and diktats against trade and routine activity in Kashmir. Naveed’s threats had so much impact that police in his search, had to put up his posters in towns and villages.

Sources said around the time, Naveed reached out to Davinder Singh for help with securing safe houses and storing weapons and paid him Rs. 1.5 million for his assistance.

Davinder Singh personally drove Naveed and his aides to Jammu and planned to take them to New Delhi. However, phone call intercepts led the Shopian cops to nab them. During his interrogation, Singh has claimed that he was working acting on the orders of intelligence agencies so that he could cultivate Naveed and infiltrate the Hizb. However, Jammu and Kashmir police officials have rubbished Singh’s claim saying that he is a highly corrupt cop and would do anything to earn an additional buck.

Singh worked in Jammu and Kashmir’s Special Operations Group, Traffic police and airport security but consistently carried an image of a corrupt official, sources said. He was also accused of his involvement in the Parliament attack by the convict Afzal Guru. (IANS)

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Kashmir Monitor staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)