CRPF held an internal audit of personnel: DG

NEW DELHI: The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the Centre’s leading counter-insurgency force, has carried out a massive internal audit to check if there were any attempts of subversion within the force after the arrest of J&K police officer, Davinder Singh, CRPF chief AP Maheshwari said on Tuesday.

Singh, the Deputy Superintendent of Police of the J&K Police, was arrested on January 11 on charges of colluding with terrorists. His arrest had stunned the J&K police force but it had also underscored the possibility that there might be other officers as well who could be colluding with terrorists. Maheshwari, who had recently taken over as CRPF chief, said “It was a grave incident .... an area of extreme concern.”

“No security grid should be allowed to be weakened by such episodes. So, all forces have to keep an internal watch. All forces should maintain vigilance so that there is no such type of subversion or some sort of intrusion within the force or somebody trying to collaborate with the adversaries. It’s a serious matter,” Maheshwari said.

The central police force, the largest paramilitary force in the world, has a sanctioned strength of 3 lakh personnel and is the leading force to counter terrorists in J&K and the Maoists in the heartland. It has deployed about 70,000 personnel in J&K for security and counterterror operations. “We carry out such audits because we know three security principles, which are anti-sabotage; access control; and antisubversion. So, there is already an inbuilt system. We have a vigilance cell, we have an intelligence cell, It is their duty to keep checking [any subversion activities].”

Maheshwari said the Davinder Singh case did not reflect on the entire J&K force and was an isolated incident. “If in an isolated incident, somebody does this, it should not be taken as any type of aspersion on the dignity of the force and on the strength of the force…,” he said. He also said the force has “changed” its tactics and bettered its security drills after the Pulwama terror attack on its convoy on February 14 last year. “We have bettered our security drills...we have bettered in terms of equipment, tactics, mobility and navigation [after the Pulwama attack],” Maheshwari told reporters at the group’s headquarters in Gurugram.