Did Tehsil police lie to IB in Aslam Khan case?

NAGPUR: Sher Mohammed alias Aslam Khan’s alleged flight to Afghanistan and then to Pakistan earlier this year has opened a Pandora’s Box. None of the agencies concerned are in a position to tell how Khan may have left India despite being an accused in a case. It also exposes the inadequate inter-agency co-ordination at different levels.
The fact that Intelligence Bureau (IB) personnel were caught unaware mean that fact that Khan was not discharged by the court reflects was informed to them by the city police.Khan was granted bail in a case of alleged violation of Foreigners Act registered in October 2010 against him at Tehsil police station.
TOI had learnt reliably, on an earlier occasion, that IB was informed ‘informally’ by Tehsil police station’s personnel that Khan was discharged by the lower court. IB is premier internal security agency. It is not clear whether its being kept in dark by Tehsil police in the sensitive case was accidental or deliberate.
Nagpur’s Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) was supposed to grill Khan for his connections in Pakistan. ATS had learnt that Khan was regularly communicating with contacts in both Pakistan and Afghanistan using some code language.
City police chief Ankush Dhanvijay said that he would call for the documents and personally check now that he was informed of the case . “It is a serious issue,” he said.
Sources in IB told TOI that city police rank and file tend to withhold information though there is a cordial working relationship at the top. Deputy commissioner of police, Zone, III, Sanjay Darade too said that the status of Aslam Khan’s case (crime no. 179/10) is undecided by the court. A senior IB official assured he would look into the alleged misleading information furnished to them by police.
Yet another abnormality associated with the matter is that the case was shifted to Tehsil police station from crime branch which is generally considered uncommon. It was Dhanvijay who had earlier entrusted the crime branch with investigation. Only he or a higher authority could have reversed the decision.
Khan was apparently nabbed by special branch and the case was registered at Tehsil police station last year. Similar action was also taken against another Pakhtoon (Afghan) national Tahir Khan in October in 2010. While police had sent a report stating that offence was registered wrongly against Tahir, it was not done in Aslam Khan’s case.
Around a month back, IB came to know that Khan had slipped away. Accordingly, it enquired with the immigration department under city police’s SB. As of today, no local agency has the information as to how and on which country’s passport did Khan exit from Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport.