SIT busts 2017 heroin recovery case as fabricated; major embarrassment for Punjab Police’s anti-narcotics wing
CHANDIGARH: In a sensational development that has rocked Punjab’s law enforcement establishment, the Anti-Narcotics Task Force (ANTF) has arrested retired Assistant Inspector General of Police Rachhpal Singh and ten other police personnel for allegedly fabricating evidence and falsely implicating a young villager in a drug trafficking case.
The arrests follow a meticulous probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT), which found that the so-called “heroin recovery” shown by the police in August 2017 was entirely fake — the contraband had been planted, records forged, and an innocent man pushed into a years-long ordeal under the state’s harsh anti-drug laws.
Officials confirmed that the accused have been booked for criminal conspiracy, fabrication of evidence, and wrongful confinement, among other offences under the Indian Penal Code and the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. The case is being viewed as one of the most serious instances of custodial misconduct to emerge from Punjab’s prolonged and controversial “war on drugs.”
The 2017 Case: An Innocent Man Framed
The origins of the case trace back to August 3, 2017, when STF officials claimed to have recovered one kilogram of heroin from a man named Balwinder Singh alias Kukku, a resident of Bhura Karimpur village in Tarn Taran district. The arrest was projected as a breakthrough in the fight against drug smuggling across the Indo-Pak border.
However, Balwinder’s family and local villagers immediately contested the police version, producing hospital records that showed he had been admitted to Civil Hospital, Patti, at the very time the alleged recovery took place. The family insisted that Balwinder had been forcibly picked up from the hospital premises and later framed in a fake case to boost the image of the STF.
As the case proceeded, glaring inconsistencies began to surface. Mobile-tower location data, CCTV footage, and call-detail records contradicted the official narrative. The Punjab and Haryana High Court, while hearing Balwinder’s petition, ordered a judicial inquiry into the case. The inquiry report accused senior STF officials of manipulating official records and planting evidence.
Subsequently, the case was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in early 2021. The CBI probe corroborated the allegations and, in October 2022, filed a detailed chargesheet naming Rachhpal Singh and nine other police officers. It stated that the officers had “deliberately fabricated the record of recovery” to falsely implicate an innocent man.
Despite the CBI’s findings, Rachhpal Singh managed to evade arrest for more than two years, reportedly using his influence to delay proceedings. A renewed SIT under the ANTF was recently constituted to re-examine the case and trace his involvement. Acting on new leads and forensic analysis, the SIT arrested Singh earlier this week from his residence.
Alongside him, ten other policemen — including an inspector, two sub-inspectors, four assistant sub-inspectors, and three head constables — were taken into custody. All of them were serving in the STF’s Amritsar and Tarn Taran units at the time of the 2017 incident.
A local court has remanded Rachhpal Singh to three-day police custody for further interrogation. Officials said the SIT will probe whether the accused were involved in other false recoveries during their tenure. “We have credible evidence that the 2017 case was fabricated from start to finish. The recovery never happened; documents were forged, and the accused conspired to project an innocent man as a smuggler, ” a senior ANTF officer told this newspaper.