Mumbai's former top cop Ramdeo Tyagi dies of prolonged illness aged 80

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Mumbai: Former Mumbai police commissioner Ramdeo Tyagi died here due to prolonged illness on Thursday, a senior official said.

Tyagi, a 1964-batch senior IPS officer, was undergoing cancer treatment at Hinduja Hospital since the last few days and succumbed to the illness at around 9 am, the officer said.

His last rites will be performed at the Shivaji Park crematorium in the afternoon, he said.

Tyagi retired as the director general of National Security Guard (NSG), the nation's elite commando force.

During the Mumbai riots in 1993, it was alleged that a special operations squad headed by Tyagi, who was then joint commissioner of police (crime), had fired indiscriminately inside Suleman Bakery in south-central Mumbai, killing nine persons who the police claimed were terrorists.

In 2001, the Maharashtra government's Special Task Force had filed a case against 18 policemen in the Suleman Usman Bakery case, but nine of them, including Tyagi, were discharged in 2003 by the trial court, he said.