SIT report exposes senior Punjab police official’s link with drug mafia

Chandigarh: The Special Investigation Team (SIT), constituted by the Punjab and Haryana High Court to inquire into the nexus between police officials and drug traffickers, has found former SSP Rajjit Singh Hundal, now AIG NRI Affairs, was complicit with Inspector Inderjit Singh, now in jail, and drug traffickers in the state.

According to highly placed sources in the Punjab government, the three reports of the SIT comprising chairman Sidharth Chattopadhyay IPS, members Parbodh Kumar IPS and Kunwar Vijay Partap Singh IPS (now MLA) have severely indicted AIG Hundal for assisting and aiding drug traffickers, especially during his field postings as an SP and later as SSP.

On February 15, 2023, Punjab and Haryana High Court will take up the matter of whether to open or not open the SIT report that has been kept in a sealed cover for the last 5 years. The High Court, for some inexplicable reason, did not open the sealed envelope having these reports and kept on adjourning the matter to the next hearing(s).  The SIT was set up in 2017.

The SIT report gives detaisl of the postings of AIG Rajjit Singh Hundal and his confidant Inspector Inderjit Singh, who was arrested by the Special Task Force (STF) with 4 kgs of heroin.  Voluminous records of the DGP office were scrambled through to prove that Rajjit Hundal on every transfer to another district wrote demi-official (DO) letters to the DGP to post Inderjit Singh with him at the same station.

When contacted AIG Rajjit Singh Hundal replied, “I am innocent in this case.” He also sent a news item in which the Supreme Court has been quoted as saying, “Assume innocence until proven guilty…”

When posted as SSP, Rajjit got Inderjit transferred to Gurdaspur, Tarn Taran, Moga, and Jalandhar. Even when Rajjit was an SP, the same inspector acted as his reader-cum-handler. The SIT report gives all these details.

Four kilograms of heroin were recovered from Inderjit when the Special Task Force (STF) headed by the then ADGP Harpreet Sidhu arrested him in June 2017. He was posted in the Crime Investigating Agency (CIA) as its in-charge in Kapurthala. Inderjit confessed to having owned the drugs recovered by the STF from his two official residences in Jalandhar and Phagwara. He was denied bail and still continues to remain in jail.

Inderjit was initially a head constable but got speedy promotions in his own rank and pay due to his proximity to Rajjit Hundal. Outwardly he was having the impression of being a “fighter’ against drug trafficking but in reality, he proved to be a double-crossing agent. The modus-operandi was to document only a small part of the total quantity of the drug seized from traffickers. The rest of the quantity used to be supplied all over Punjab in police vehicles.

STF chief ADGP Harpreet Sidhu had issued a summon to Rajjit when he was posted as SSP, Moga for questioning after the arrest of his front man Inspector Inderjit.  But two senior officials shielded Rajjit and he did not show up for questioning. Finally, the High Court took suo motu notice of the issue and the SIT was formed.

According to sources Chairman of the SIT, Sidharth Chattopadhaya, has also independently appended his findings with the three other reports signed by all the members of the SIT unanimously. The appended report has not been signed by the other two members of the SIT.

Sources say he did not discuss what “highly sensitive” additional evidence he had come across that he did not find necessary to share it with the other two members. Many feel that Chattopadhyaya could have had some personal agenda in keeping away other members of the SIT.