Chandigarh: Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has ordered the dismissal of controversial police officer Rajjit Singh for his alleged involvement in a nexus between police and drug dealers.
Tweeting the information Monday, Mann said Rajjit will also face a vigilance probe into the sources of his wealth.
Rajjit Singh, an officer of the Punjab Police Service (PPS), has served as senior superintendent of police (SSP) in several districts of Punjab. At the time of his dismissal, he was posted as assistant inspector general (AIG), NRI affairs.
A special investigation team (SIT) of the Punjab Police had indicted Rajjit Singh for allegedly patronising — for several years — a tainted junior policeman who is accused of facilitating drug smuggling besides planting drugs on people to extort money.
The policeman in question — Inderjit Singh — has served as an inspector at various places in Punjab and was arrested in January 2017 by the state task force (STF) to control drug abuse. As much as 4 kg of heroin, an AK 47, and Rs 16 lakh is said to have been recovered from his residence in Kapurthala.
He was subsequently dismissed from service.
In November 2017, the matter of Inderjit Singh’s dismissal and the possible complicity of Rajjit Singh, then posted as SSP, was brought to the notice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court by senior advocate Anupam Gupta. This was during the hearing on a public interest litigation on controlling drug abuse in the state.
The high court ordered the setting up of an SIT to probe Rajjit’s alleged complicity. The SIT, headed by Siddharth Chattopadhyaya — a 1986-batch IPS officer — submitted three detailed reports on Rajjit to the high court in 2018. The reports were lying in sealed covers with the court, until last month.
In January last year, the Lawyers for Human Rights International (LFHRI), a leading advocacy group headed by human rights lawyer Navkiran Singh, moved an application in the high court for the opening of the sealed reports, so that appropriate action could be taken against those found guilty by the SIT.
During the resumed hearing of the case on 28 March this year, a division bench of the high court headed by Justice G.S. Sandhawalia ordered the opening of the three reports and asked the Punjab government to act on them.
In his tweet Monday, CM Mann said “nobody who has been involved in drug smuggling will be spared”.
“Having seen the contents of the sealed reports, Rajjit PPS is being named in the FIR related to drugs smuggling and dismissed from service forthwith,” he added. “The vigilance department is directed to assess the properties made through drug money.”
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The allegations against Rajjit Singh
According to the SIT reports, accessed by ThePrint, the team found that Rajjit Singh had on two occasions ensured that Inderjit was posted in the districts he was heading as police chief.
The first was in Tarn Taran, the reports say, adding that Rajjit wrote to the additional director general of police (administration) saying that Inderjit Singh’s services were urgently required there, and that he may be immediately transferred from Jalandhar rural to Tarn Taran.
Similarly, when Rajjit joined as SSP Hoshiarpur in August 2014, he reportedly wrote to the police headquarters, saying that Inderjit was an extremely hard-working officer and had very good investigation skills and was urgently required at Hoshiarpur.
He, the reports say, helped Inderjit by getting him promotions despite Inderjit being named in multiple FIRs and facing several departmental inquiries.
The SIT reports also list various immovable properties worth crores said to be owned by Rajjit Singh, suggesting that a further probe was needed to ascertain his sources of income.
The SIT reports give details of the properties — including multiple residential and agriculture plots bought and sold over the years — as well as possible cash transactions made by the police officer for the purchase and sale of properties.
The SIT reports further state that huge amounts of money and gifts were received by Rajjit in the period following 2013 from certain persons. Although Rajjit duly informed the department about these transactions, the financial capability of the persons he took the loans from needed to be probed further, the reports add.
The SIT said there had been a sudden rise in the assets acquired by Rajjit and his family members from 2013.
According to the other findings of the SIT, Inderjit Singh was involved in smuggling drugs with the aid of known drug smugglers and a BSF trooper (now dismissed).
Inderjit Singh has also been accused of “planting fake drugs” on various persons to extort money, with the reports adding that he was naming people in drugs cases and extorting money to give them relief through discharge orders, bails and acquittals.
The SIT reports end by saying that Inderjit Singh was also the favourite of several other officers in Punjab Police who specifically asked for him to be posted with them. This also needs to be probed further, they add.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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