THE DRAMATIC ARREST OF DAVINDER SINGH, Deputy Superintendent of Police in Kashmir, has stirred a hornets’ nest. It is a game of smoke and mirrors in which something specific becomes visible rarely. With the police officer’s arrest, something momentarily became visible. Before the smoke gathers again, what would it tell us? What is it exposing and what might be covered up?
The questions stare us in the face. Would these questions ever be answered?
Any sensational incident in Kashmir that makes it to the media in India is invariably a palimpsest for an accumulated sense of injustice that has permeated the local population for decades. That is what the arrest of Davinder Singh has rekindled.
At the time of his arrest, Davinder Singh was part of an anti-hijacking team of the police serving at the Srinagar airport, one of India’s most sensitive defense installations, and one where the Indian Air Force also controls all commercial air traffic. But he has a longer history of being a dreaded counterinsurgency police officer with a fearful reputation for torture and extortion.
The shadowy police officer was nabbed and arrested on January 11 along with Naveed Babu, a wanted commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen, along with one other militant and their civilian associate. He was reported to be ferrying them out from the Kashmir valley. Naveed Babu was a police officer who had deserted the force in June 2017 to join the Hizbul Mujahideen and had reportedly risen to become it's second in command. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has since taken up Davinder Singh’s case, the agency’s first directly involving a police officer tangled with militants in the valley.
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