Senior Odisha IPS officer Amulya Kumar Patnaik has been appointed the new Delhi Police Commissioner, the Home Ministry announced on Monday.
Patnaik, currently a Special Commissioner, is a 1985 batch Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram and Union Territory (AGMUT) cadre IPS officer. He succeeds Alok Kumar Verma, who was appointed CBI chief on January 19.
Now posted as Special Commissioner (Administration) in Delhi Police, Patnaik was one of the front runners for the top post along with two other officers, Deepak Mishra and Dharmendra Kumar.
Patnaik, though a batch junior to Mishra and Kumar, was apparently chosen due to his "clean" image.
Mishra is now with the Central Reserve Police Force as an Additional Director General while Kumar is an Additional Director General with the Central Industrial Security Force. Both are 1984 batch IPS officers.
Patnaik, who has also served as Joint Commissioner (Operations) in Delhi Police, will now head the over 78,000 strong Delhi Police force, which is directly controlled by the central government.
Patnaik has tackled several critical assignments of Delhi Police.
He received the Police medal for Distinguished Services in 2009 when deputed as the Joint Commissioner (Crime) in Delhi Police and Police Medal for Meritorious Service 2002.
He has also served as Deputy Inspector General and subsequently Inspector General in the Special Protection Group. He has also served as Deputy General of Police in the north-eastern state of Mizoram.
While with the SPG he handled several sensitive charges and is credited with planning and providing security for the lone train journey ever undertaken by a Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in 2003, and a string of road-shows all over the country in the run-up to the 2004 general elections, according to his official bio-data.
He was in the forefront of the police action to quell riots during two massive public rallies - an anti-Dunkel farmers protest in 1994 and protest for separate state of Uttarakhand. He received a grave injury during the anti-Dunkel rally in 1994 in which the mob turned violent.
He remained posted as Senior Superintendent of Police (Law and Order) Pondicherry, Additional Deputy Commissioner in Central district of Delhi Police, Deputy Commissioner in East and South districts.
Under his leadership crime investigation reached new levels in East and South districts of Delhi Police with several noteworthy detections, like arrest of Mumbai blast accused having bounty of Rs 2 lakh declared by Central Bureau of Investigation.
He is renowned for the detections he made in important investigations like the Bombay blast case, the parcel bomb case, the Sarita Vihar kidnapping of a schoolboy by armed gangsters.
During his handling of the Central, East and South districts of Delhi Police, it saw a drastic fall in the number of crimes in the area, due to his focus on preventive planning and police-community partnership.
In 1995, after undertaking a study of the plight of victims of crime in East Delhi, he took the initiative to launch "Pratidhi", a Delhi Police initiative to extend counselling support and other forms of assistance to victims of traumatic crimes which is working successfully to this day.
To prevent crimes against women he also launched the Anti-Obscene Calls cell and Anti-Stalking Cell.
--IANS
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