Former Punjab Director General of Police (DGP) Siddharth Chattopadhyaya, who is among top officers indicted by the Supreme Court-appointed inquiry committee that probed the January 5, 2022, lapse in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s security, had retired on March 31 last year. A 1986-batch IPS officer of the Punjab cadre, Chattopadhyaya is a recipient of the President’s police medal for gallantry, for “neutralising the topmost terrorists in the state”, Police (Special Duty) medal, Police medal for meritorious service and Director General’s commendation roll (twice), during his stint with the BSF. Chattopadhyaya was a supervisory officer probing property details of Akali patron and former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal and his family members in the 2003 corruption and disproportionate assets case, registered by the erstwhile Congress government led by then chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh, in which the Badals and a number of other accused named in the case were acquitted by a Mohali court in 2010 for lack of evidence. By that time, an Akali-led government was in power. In 2014, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had quashed strictures passed against Chattopadhyaya by the Mohali court that acquitted the Badals and others, while noting that witnesses turning hostile in a case is no ground for perjury proceedings against officers. A choice of then Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) chief Navjot Singh Sidhu for appointment as regular DGP of Punjab, Chattopadhyaya managed to become the officiating DGP in December 2021 as Sidhu had his way, with the dynamics within the ruling Congress in Punjab changing fast at the time. In September 2021, Charanjit Singh Channi replaced the Captain as CM. Channi handpicked 1988-batch IPS officer Iqbal Preet Singh Sahota as officiating DGP, as regular DGP Dinkar Gupta went on leave in the wake of the change of guard in the Congress government. Later, as Sidhu continued to bat for Chattopadhyaya, he was appointed the officiating DGP in December 2021. Weeks later, PM Modi landed at Bathinda on the morning of January 5 to visit the National Martyrs Memorial at Hussainiwala. His helicopter flight abandoned due to inclement weather, the PM travelled in a convoy by road, when, around 30 km before the destination, the convoy was delayed 15-20 minutes by an impromptu protest on a flyover along the highway, which was immediately flagged as a major security lapse on the part of the state's police force. Chattopadhyaya also headed a three-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed in December 2017, on the directions of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, to probe allegations of police officer Raj Jit Singh’s complicity with Inspector Inderjit Singh, who had earlier been arrested in a drug case by the anti-drug STF headed by then Additional Director General of Police Harpreet Singh Sidhu. The report continues to remain with the High Court in a sealed cover, along with the STF report on the Punjab drugs case, based on findings of the Enforcement Directorate. The next date of hearing in the case is on March 28. The court had ordered formation of a Chattopadhyaya-led SIT, after Raj Jit Singh, the then Moga SSP, had sought that the investigation be transferred away from the STF headed by ADGP Sidhu. Chattopadhyaya was subsequently issued a questionnaire by another SIT, led by then IG L K Yadav, which was probing the suicide case of Indepreet Singh Chadha — son of the former president of the Amritsar-based Chief Khalsa Diwan charity, Charanjit Singh Chadha — whose purported video with the principal of a women’s institution in a compromising position had gone viral. Chadha had mentioned Chattopadhyaya’s name in a 2016 diary entry, in connection with a case filed against him in the NRI Commission, where Chattopadhyaya was once a member. The HC stayed the proceedings against Chattopadhyaya in that case, after he informed the court of the role of then Punjab DGP Suresh Arora and then DGP (Intelligence) Dinkar Gupta, which had surfaced in the ongoing SIT probe against dismissed inspector Inderjit Singh and Raj Jit Singh in the drug trafficking case, and said that “attempts are now being made to implicate me in the suicide case, at the behest of Arora and Gupta”. Arora and Gupta have denied the allegations, although Chattopadhyaya, in his application, had also mentioned that “several significant facts and pointers, including reportedly the benami house of a DGP… are being investigated to confirm Arora and Gupta's roles in the case involving Inspector Inderjit and SSP Raj Jit Singh”.
