For a little less than three years, from June 2016 till end-January 2019, newly appointed Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director Rishi Kumar Shukla was the director general of police (DGP) of Madhya Pradesh. Three days ago, on January 30, he was shunted out and made chairman of the Madhya Pradesh Police Housing Corporation by the Kamal Nath government.

An avid tennis player, Shukla refused to comment on his new posting in the CBI on Saturday. “I am going to Delhi carrying all your best wishes and I will be back after two years,” was all he said.

A 1983-batch IPS officer from the Madhya Pradesh cadre, Shukla was on leave for six weeks from October 15 -- Assembly elections were held in the state at that time -- because of a bypass surgery. He resumed charge as DGP on December 4 under the new Congress government headed by Kamal Nath.

According to senior Madhya Pradesh officials, Shukla was born in Gwalior and did his primary schooling there. Twice he got admission to an Indian Institute of Technology – first to IIT Kharagpur and then to IIT Kanpur -- but on both occasions had to quit for family reasons. He then did a B Com and an MA in Philosophy from Gwalior and cracked the civil services exam in 1983.

His first posting was as additional superintendent of police, Raipur, of undivided Madhya Pradesh in 1985. Then he served as superintendent of police in Damoh, Shivpuri and Mandsaur districts. He was on central deputation twice -- from 1992-1996 and again from 2000-2005. He served as ADG intelligence from 2009-2012.

He is credited with bringing up the anti-terrorist squad (ATS) and the special task force (STF) in Madhya Pradesh in 2008-2009 and is known for his professional competence. A tech-savvy officer, he was behind the technological advancement of Madhya Pradesh police, including the Dial 100 system.

It was during his tenure that the farmers’ agitation took place in the state, leading to the death of six farmers in police firing in Mandsaur on June 6, 2017. The jailbreak of eight SIMI activists from Bhopal jail and their subsequent encounter with police also took place under him in October 2016.

Shukla has won many inter-department tennis tournaments. A joke doing the rounds in police circles is that if one wants to get close to Shukla, one better learn how to play tennis.

His wife, Neelam, is a school teacher. He has two daughters, both engineers.

First Published: Feb 02, 2019 23:46 IST