A new book states that Jaimal Singh, the driver of the unfortunate bus blown up by a suicide bomber in Pulwama on February 14, 2019, was not supposed to drive that day and was merely substituting for another accomplice. IPS officer Danesh Rana, who is currently an Additional Director General of Police in Jammu and Kashmir, has come up with a definitive account of the Pulwama attack, titled “As For As The Saffron Fields” which has pieced together the conspiracy behind the strike. which thwarted this attack. 40 CRPF jawans lost their lives.
Based on personal interviews with Nayak, police chargesheets and other evidence, Rana breaks down the modern face of militancy in Kashmir. Recalling the sequence of events of February 14, 2019, he writes of how the CRPF personnel traveling in the convoy started arriving before the reporting time before dawn.
“After checking the seating arrangements, the personnel boarded the buses one by one. They took some food packets, fruits and biscuits, and rested their mineral-water bottles by their sides. The freezing cold left them Scorched faces, arms and ears. Many took down their windows, while others sat with their hands held together inside their jackets to keep them warm,” he writes. According to Adarsh, head constable Jaimal Singh was among the last to reach along with the other drivers. Drivers are always the last to report; They are allowed extra half an hour’s sleep as they have to travel strenuously.
“Jaimal Singh didn’t have to drive that day, he was merely taking the place of another colleague,” says Rana. Posted as a clerk in the motor transport section, Jaimal Singh’s job involved the history of vehicles and their There was a lot of file-keeping involved, regarding fuel consumption and repair bills, and the nominal roll of drivers and vehicles being pressed into the convoy.
“Head constable Kripal Singh of Chamba, Himachal Pradesh had applied for leave as his daughter was about to get married soon. Kripal was already handed over the bus with registration number HR49F-0637, and the supervising officer put him on leave. Was told to leave. Jammu is returning,” says the book published by HarperCollins India. “Kirpal was happy with it; he could always drive the bus up and down, and in any case his leave would begin after five days. But Jaimal was wary of the weather. The convoy closed down for more than a week after the convoy in Srinagar. had left for the highway. The weather forecast predicted more rain and snow, and there was a high chance that Kirpal would be stranded in Srinagar and would not be able to go home.”
Hence Jaimal Singh voluntarily replaced Kripal Singh. “He was an experienced driver, and had been on Highway 44 several times. He was familiar with its slopes, turns and contour. Late on the night of February 13, he called his wife to Punjab and told her about his last minute duty. Told… this was to be their last conversation,” writes Rana.
Among the personnel was constable Thaka Belkar of Ahmednagar in Maharashtra. Her family had just arranged her marriage and all the preparations were going on. Belkar had applied for leave, but just 10 days before her wedding, she found her name listed among the passengers of a bus bound for Kashmir. “But as the convoy was about to depart, luck smiled upon him. His leave was approved at the last minute! He quickly got off the bus and smiled and waved to his colleagues. Little did he know it was the last minute. Will happen,” says Rana.
Besides Jaimal Singh’s blue bus, the unusually long convoy had 78 other vehicles, including 15 trucks, two olive-green buses belonging to the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), an extra bus, a recovery van and a Ambulances were involved. After the Pulwama attack, the NIA, which was tasked with the investigation, was barely able to piece together the initial stages of the crime, hitting a roadblock each time. While preliminary investigations based on forensic and other scientific evidence found some clues, these were not enough to understand who the perpetrators were.
When it appeared that the NIA investigation had stalled, the agency found a damaged mobile phone from an encounter site where two Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists were killed. The recovered phone had an integrated GPS that geotagged the images, revealing the date, time and location of the photographs and videos. It was the discovery of the phone that opened the Pulwama case.
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