Mamata Banerjee Once Demonstrated A Dharna For This Cop, He Will Now Lead West Bengal Police As DGP. Know Full Story Here

West Bengal's new DGP Rajiv Kumar is currently the principal secretary in the information and technology department. He is considered close to Mamata Banerjee.

West Bengal: The Mamata Banerjee-led government has made former Kolkata police commissioner IPS officer Rajiv Kumar the new DGP of the state. He was chosen for this post after the retirement of Manoj Malviya. Rajiv Kumar, a native of Chandauli district in eastern Uttar Pradesh, has had a long association with controversies. Currently, he is counted among the favourite officers of CM Mamata Banerjee. Before that, he was a favourite officer of former CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. Rajiv Kumar’s career has been linked with both praise and criticism.

When the CBI had started its action during the investigation of the Saradha scam, Mamata Banerjee had sat on a dharna over his role. Whereas before that, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) had accused the chief of the Special Task Force (STF) of Kolkata Police, Rajiv Kumar, of tapping the phone of then railway minister Mamata Banerjee while being in the opposition in West Bengal in 2009. Later, a decade later, i.e. in 2019, Mamata Banerjee had opposed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe against Kumar in the Saradha chit fund case.

Who Is IPS Rajiv Kumar? 

57-year-old Rajiv Kumar is currently the principal secretary in the information and technology department. He is considered close to Mamata Banerjee. He is famous for his investigation and electronic surveillance skills. The IPS officer of the 1989 batch, Kumar has an engineering degree from IIT-Roorkee. He has worked on important posts like commissioner, joint commissioner (STF) and director general (CID) of Kolkata Police. Under his leadership, the STF of Kolkata Police was widely discussed for its campaigns against the Maoists.

Relation With Controversies

He played an important role in arresting Chhatradhar Mahato, an important person of the Lalgarh movement. Kumar, a native of Uttar Pradesh, had to face the allegations of TMC’s then national general secretary Mukul Roy while working as the STF chief in 2009. Roy had accused him of tapping the phone of then railway minister Mamata Banerjee at the behest of the Left Front government. In 2011, when the TMC led by Mamata Banerjee came to power by defeating the Left Front, an attempt was made to transfer Kumar to a less important post, but senior police officers intervened to stop this step.

In 2012, when the Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate was established, Kumar became its first commissioner. In 2013, when the Saradha chit fund scam came to light and the TMC government was under heavy pressure, Kumar arrested Sudipta Sen and Debjani Mukherjee, the chairman and partner of the Saradha group, from Kashmir. Kumar led the Special Investigation Team (SIT) and due to his proximity to the ruling government, he received both praise and criticism.