Heart of Punjab: The history & mystery of elusive ‘black sheep’ in Punjab Police
The Punjab Government’s recent directive to compile a list of police officers allegedly colluding with drug smugglers has rekindled the mystery surrounding the existence of such lists in the past. The story of these “black sheep” in uniform dates back over a decade, yet no definitive list has ever been made public.
The saga began on September 16, 2013, when Shashi Kant, a former Director General of Police (DGP) of Punjab Prisons, claimed before the Punjab and Haryana High Court that he had prepared a list of corrupt officers six years earlier, in 2007. At that time, Kant held key positions in the Punjab Police, including heading the Intelligence Wing and later overseeing the Punjab Prisons Department. He stated that the list was submitted to then Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal for action.
Despite the claim, the list never surfaced — nor did any such list prepared after that see the light of day.
In 2013, then Home Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal denied the existence of the list — famous as “Shashi Kant list” — adding to the intrigue. The issue has resurfaced periodically, but nothing has been put in public domain.
During election campaigns, political parties often promise to crack down on corrupt police officers, yet that list or others like that remain hidden from public view. The current Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government is the third administration to task the police with creating a list of tainted officers.
Previous attempts, though launched with fanfare, have yielded no concrete results. The AAP government, which came to power in 2022, has prioritised tackling corruption, especially among police officers involved with drug smugglers.
In 2023, it initiated an investigation to identify such officers, including those linked to disgraced cops Raj Jit Singh and Inderjit Singh. The findings of this effort, however, are still awaited.
In this particular case, the allegations can be traced back to a jailed constable named Tarlochan Singh. Convicted of murder in 2004, Tarlochan revealed in a letter to a visiting District Magistrate in 2011 that drugs were easily available inside Punjab jails. His lawyer, Navkiran Singh, brought the matter to the attention of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which took it up as a PIL. Shashi Kant, then DGP of Prisons, appeared before the court and, on September 16, 2013, reiterated that he had submitted a list of corrupt officers involved in drug trafficking to the CM years earlier.
During this time, arrests under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act were on the rise, surging dramatically between 2011 and 2013. Despite those efforts, no official list of tainted officers were ever presented in court. Shashi Kant has since cited the Official Secrets Act as the reason for not making the list public. In 2019, he requested the court to compel the state government to update the list, if it did possess it.
The case eventually led to the formation of several special investigation teams (SITs) by the Punjab Police to investigate the drug nexus. However, no conclusive action has been taken against corrupt officers on the basis of the alleged list. Despite multiple efforts by an NGO, Lawyers for Human Rights International, which intervened in the PIL, the case was closed in 2023 — and no list was made public, predictably.
The Bhagwant Mann government faces increasing pressure as it nears the halfway mark of its five-year term. While there have been recent attempts to investigate police involvement in drug smuggling — such as the controversial transfer of 10,000 police officers in May 2023 — DGP Gaurav Yadav has publicly stated that none of the transferred officers were linked to drug smugglers.
As the mystery of the “black sheep” in the Punjab Police continues, the state waits to see if the government will finally break the silence and bring the elusive list of corrupt officers to light, not only within the police but across other departments like Prisons, Health, and Food and Drug Administration.
