Chandigarh: A report by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) has revealed that sacked Inspector Inderjit Singh of Punjab allegedly used to charge huge sums of money from drug smugglers as well as gullible people by slapping drug smuggling cases on them.
According to the report, Gurprakash Singh of Amritsar was implicated in a drug smuggling case and extorted lakhs of rupees, while nothing was recovered from him. Similarly, a team led by Inderjit picked up furniture and all household items from the house of another alleged drug smuggler Gurjit Singh.
This has been revealed in three recently made public investigation reports after five years. According to the investigation, Inspector (dismissed) Inderjit and several other police officers like him have also earned huge money from many persons by registering such cases.
Most of these cases date back to the SAD-BJP coalition government. At that time, Punjab was at the forefront of the country in terms of cases registered under the NDPS Act and large scale arrests.
This was a period when 35-40 persons were arrested daily in punjab in case of drug smuggling or seizures.
The report said that this included cases where drugs were actually recovered, but the police investigation provided legal assistance to the accused through some technical loopholes.
Once a drug smuggler was caught, it was common for 15-20 other persons to be named in the FIR and extorted money from them.
According to the report of the Special Investigation Team (SIT), it also examined the details of the cases registered under the NDPS Act, which were registered during inspector Inderjit’s tenure as CIA Tarn Taran.
“In almost all the cases, challans for assisting the accused under the NDPS Act were produced in the court much later than the scheduled time,” the report said. Samples were also not sent to forensic science laboratories (FSLs) in time to help the accused in most of the cases.”
During the investigation report, this common trend was found in the FIR, “During the investigation, more than 20 persons were named in several cases 15 times and nothing was recovered from them.” Later, some were let off after inspector (dismissed) Inderjit Singh or his juniors gave a statement in the court in this regard. Even the recovery from the alleged drug smugglers was not fully shown.