New Delhi, Aug 1 (PTI) Former Mumbai police commissioner and BJP leader Satya Pal Singh said on Friday that he had flagged “false detection” in some terror cases at DGP conferences during the UPA government, claiming that political motivation had guided investigation at that time, including in the Malegaon blast case.
A special court in Mumbai on Thursday acquitted all seven accused, including former BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur, in the 2008 terror case for want of reliable evidence. The BJP has alleged that Thakur, a Hindutva activist, and Hindu groups were blamed for the incident as the then ruling Congress wanted to substantiate its theory of “saffron terror”.
Singh, a former IPS officer of the Maharashtra cadre who was not directly associated with the Malegaon probe, said he often gathered from his fellow officers that evidence was fabricated for scoring political advantage in terror cases. Malegaon case probe was one such investigation, he added.
“I said at DGP conferences real accused were not being arrested by some anti-terrorism police agencies and had suggested that the Intelligence Bureau should monitor probes in terror strikes. Arresting innocent persons not only shows police incompetence but can also turn them into criminals,” he said.
He said the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a leading US agency, had suspected Lashkar-e-Toiba’s link to the 2007 Samjhauta Express blasts but it was not pursued by probe agencies in India, alleging political motivation.
The UPA government wanted to discredit Hindu religious and cultural organisation and floated the “saffron terror” theory, the former Union minister alleged.
The Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad (ATS), which probed the Malegaon blast case before the National Investigation Agency (NIA) took over the investigation in 2011, was not above fabricating evidence at that time, he claimed. Singh linked the alleged suicide of an ACP, Vinod Bhat, in 2006 to such departmental pressure.
“That time, I was told not to speak to the media on the issue. Bhat was an upright and hardworking cop who was my staff officer before he was drafted into the ATS,” he said.
Singh quit the IPS in 2014, a year before his retirement, and fought the Lok Sabha election as a BJP candidate. He won from Baghpat in 2014 and 2019. PTI KR KR KSS KSS
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