Karnataka gets first woman police chief

Neelamani Raju is the senior-most IPS officer in Karnataka. Kashif Masood

NEELAMANI N RAJU, a 1983-batch Indian Police Service officer, on Tuesday took charge as Karnataka’s police chief — the state’s first woman director general and inspector general of police. She takes over following the retirement of R K Dutta on superannuation. Despite being the senior-most IPS officer in Karnataka, Raju was not expected to become the police chief, as the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government was perceived to be in favour of her junior, H C Kishore Chandra, the director general of state CID unit.

Kishore Chandra was said to be the favourite for the post since he is from Karnataka, and also because he comes from the dominant Vokkaliga community, which the Congress is trying to woo in south Karnataka ahead of the Assembly elections next year. Several top state ministers who come from the Vokkaliga community are believed to have pitched for Chandra’s candidature.

Sources said the government changed its mind at the eleventh hour and selected Raju.

Raju is from Roorkee in Uttarakahand and is wife of former IAS officer Narasimha Raju, who was secretary to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah before his retirement last year.

Raju, who served in the Intelligence Bureau in the Union Home Ministry for 23 years, returned to Karnataka last year and was serving as the director general of the state internal security department. She was considered the underdog in the race for the post of police chief on account of her relative inexperience in serving in executive roles in Karnataka Police.

Sources in the government said that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah eventually decided to go by seniority in picking Raju as the police chief in order to avoid legal complications for denying the top police post to the senior-most officer in the state cadre.