Committee constitute to investigate PM Modi's security breach summons DGP & 13 other officers

|HT|

The three-member committee constituted by the Union home ministry to probe the security breach during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Punjab visit on January 5 has summoned state police chief S Chattopadhyaya and 13 other senior officials in Ferozepur on Friday. Besides DGP Chattopadhyaya, the officials summoned are additional director general of police (ADGP) G Nageshwar Rao, ADGP Jitendra Jain, inspector general of police (IGP), Patiala, Mukhwinder Singh Chinna, Ferozepur deputy inspector general Inderbir Singh, Faridkot DIG Surjeet Singh, Ferozepur deputy commissioner Davinder Singh, Ferozepur senior superintendent of police (SSP) Harmandeep Hans, Moga SSP Charanjit Singh Sohal, Kotkapura duty magistrate Varinder Singh, Ludhiana joint commissioner Ankur Mahendru, Bathinda deputy commissioner ASP Sandhu, Bathinda SSP Ajay Maluja and the Ferozepur VVIP control room in-charge.

The communiqué sent by Punjab chief secretary Anirudh Tewari said, “You are requested to meet the committee on January 7 at 10am onwards at BSF Campus, Ferozepur, along with the relevant orders/documents/records with reference to the above subject.” The committee announced by the Union home ministry will inquire into “serious lapses” in security arrangements which exposed the VVIP to “grave risk”.

The panel is led by Sudhir Kumar Saxena, secretary (Security) in the Cabinet Secretariat. Its other members are Intelligence Bureau joint director Balbir Singh and Special Protection Group IG S Suresh.

In what the Centre described as a “major security lapse”, Modi’s convoy was stranded Wednesday for 20 minutes on a flyover due to a blockade by farm protesters in Ferozepur. He returned from poll-bound Punjab without attending any event, including a BJP rally, and the Centre blamed the Congress government in Punjab for the security breach.

Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi, however, claimed that a last-minute change of travel plans by Modi led to the situation. On Thursday, Channi’s government also constituted a committee of retired Justice Mehtab Singh Gill and principal secretary, home affairs and justice, Anurag Verma to conduct an investigation. The committee was asked to submit its report in three days.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)