Police, CISF tug it out again at airport

The rift between the CISF and Delhi Police at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) came out in the open once more on Saturday. This time, the two agencies squabbled over the intentions of a duo hailing from Punjab.

The rift between the CISF and Delhi Police at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) came out in the open once more on Saturday. This time, the two agencies squabbled over the intentions of a duo hailing from Punjab.

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The in-fighting led to a tout from Chandigarh escaping with as much as $8,350 and Rs 1,60,000 in cash on a Mumbai-bound Kingfisher flight. The man was later identified as a tout from Chandigarh.

“Around 11pm, two persons identified as Harjit Singh and Sandeep Singh were intercepted carrying invalid documents and wandering suspiciously. The police were intimated and the duo were handed over to them for investigation,” explained a senior CISF official.

But according to police, not only were they disallowed access to the duo for hours, but were also ‘misled’ into believing that Harjit and Sandeep were attempting to fly abroad illegally.

“Both of them had actually been duped by one Sukhjeet Singh, who had promised to get them a valid visa to fly to Canada. Surjeet was to meet them at the airport and take money from them to arrange e-tickets,” said a senior Delhi Police officer.

“But when they were handed over to us, we were told that the victims were the criminals,” the officer added.

When questioned at length, police claimed that the men had approached a CISF official for help in tracking Sukhjeet to prevent him from escaping but were detained by CISF instead.

The incident, the second in less than a week, comes on the heels of the Dwarka District Courts summoning the DIG of the CISF to explain why they took more than 12 hours to hand over custody of three men, arrested for allegedly being part of a human trafficking racket busted last week, to the police.