Clean Chit to SP Salwinder? NIA Must Explain Its Deceitful Move

The NIA must explain it’s deceitful move to exonerate Punjab Police SP Salwinder Singh, writes Chandan Nandy.

Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh, who was allegedly abducted by terrorists involved in the Pathankot attack, arrives in New Delhi on Tuesday for questioning. (Photo: PTI)

Senior Punjab Police officer Salwinder Singh, who was being probed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in connection with the Pathankot terror strike, was given a clean chit by the NIA after the scientific tests including the lie-detector test found nothing adverse against him, according to official sources quoted by PTI.

The NIA must explain it’s deceitful move to exonerate Salwinder Singh, if the reports are correct because now conflicting reports suggest that the NIA has denied giving this clean chit.

Every move of the agency, right from the beginning, was aimed at letting the man off the hook. The process itself was questionable. And it was done because of political pressure or Salwinder’s indirect threat to expose the politicians.

If Salwinder is innocent, the NIA must explain so.

And it must explain what on earth was he doing at the mazaar so late.

It must explain whether he knew Ikagar Singh, the driver who was brutally murdered by the terrorists.

It must explain the gap of three hours between Salwinder’s release and his calling up his superiors.

If the NIA doesn’t explain these points, we must conclude that it is not an independent agency. And it has done a great disservice to not just the country and itself, but to national security.

If there indeed is a ‘clean chit’, the NIA would essentially be resorting to an elaborate fraud.

It first sought to give the appearance that it would interrogate the former Gurdaspur SP, who doesn’t have a good reputation anyway – no less than five women constables had filed sexual harassment complaints against him – and then gave him the time and the confidence to undergo a polygraph test. In other words, the polygraph test –there is nothing to prove whether it was at all employed – was tailor made for Salwinder.

But why was this charade needed? Why this drama? Because arresting Salwinder would have meant a tough interrogation in custody, which in turn would have led to shocking revelations of the involvement of other police officers and politicians in Punjab’s nefarious drug menace which, in recent times, has got mixed up with Pakistan-sponsored terrorism.

What is of concern is that the NIA has acted as a political arm of the government at the Centre that has shamelessly sought to stand by its discredited alliance partner in Punjab. This will certainly cause an erosion of public trust in the new organisation created in 2008 specifically to investigate cases of terrorism.

Exonerating Salwinder would mean letting the other suspicious characters in the episode – the mazaar caretaker Som Raj, the jeweller Rajesh Verma and the cook Madan Gopal – off the hook. This means that the NIA has no tangible and material evidence or information to proceed with the Pathankot terror attack case. And this might well be the beginning of its downfall as a trustworthy investigative agency.

(Chandan Nandy is a senior journalist with years of investigative reporting experience. He has spent nearly 10 days covering the behind-the-scenes details of the Pathankot attack.)

Read Chandan’s Pathankot attack series:

• Quint Exclusive: Border Drug Mafia Paid Gurdaspur SP in Diamonds
  
• Pathankot Attack: Questions Swirl Around Gurdaspur SP’s Role
  
• Pathankot Attack: The Route SP Salwinder Took Could Blow His Alibi
  
• Pathankot’s Drug Racket: Punjab May Yet Become Another Mexico
  
• Don’t Hedge, Arrest Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh Immediately