New Delhi: Last week, Delhi High Court came down heavily on Delhi Police’s special cell and its methods in connection with its perceived high-handedness in a case. Sunday’s incident — a cop attached to the cell shot dead a delivery executive and injured another person — has yet again put the unit’s functioning in the dock.Just a few months ago, the reported mismanagement in the unit was exposed after one of its cops burgled its own high-security store and stole cash and valuables worth crores. The sensational heist, which came close to businessman Nadir Shah’s suspicious murder, was supposed to be a wake-up call for the cell.In Shah’s case, two of the special cell’s senior officers, a DCP and an ACP, were spotted near his gym just a day before the murder. The area was, in fact, swarming with the unit’s cops on the night of the murder. Not just that, police from the counter-intelligence wing had even met Shah at a farmhouse a week before he was killed.TOI had exposed this scandal last March.Serving and retired officers of the special cell agreed that inquiries were supposed to be conducted and heads should have rolled in these cases to send a clear message that no one was above the law. However, matters were brazenly hushed up.In the latter part of 2025, there seemed a minor shake-up in the cell was in the making, but things went back to square one soon. Weeks later, the Nov 10 car bombing killed over a dozen people, bringing the unit’s performance under the scanner again.The anti-terror unit was caught napping as the “doctor-terror module” operated at its doorstep in NCR for over two years and collected thousands of kgs of explosives without anyone getting a whiff. “The unit strangely seemed indifferent even when J&K police conducted a raid. A man who escaped the raid managed to lurk in the vicinity of Delhi for nine days before driving his explosives-laden car through different parts of the city for 12 hours and blowing himself up near Red Fort,” said a police source.The blast seemed to have temporarily jolted the special cell out of its slumber as it quickly gathered leads, traced the bomber’s route and made other breakthroughs. However, the damage was already done.In May 2024, TOI had reported how the unit’s functioning had become questionable, posing a serious threat to the capital’s security, and how the unit, once considered among the best in the country, lost its shine.“Since then, many old hands and veterans from the unit are gone — either retired or shunted out. Today, it is working as an extension of the intelligence branch, focused on data collection and trying to mimic the operations of National Investigation Agency (NIA). Detection has taken a back seat,” said an officer who retired from the special cell.Currently, the scattered cell seems in urgent need of an antidote. An ambitious govt project to form a dedicated anti-terror squad (ATS) has also remained restricted to the files even as sources highlight its significance as part of the national counter-terror policy.
