Senior IPS officer Mahesh Kumar Aggarwal appointed Head of the Tamil Nadu Police

The Tamil Nadu government on Friday appointed senior IPS officer  Mahesh Kumar Aggarwal as the Director-General of Police and Head of the Police Force.

The 1994-Batch IPS officer is serving as the DGP in the Border Security Force (BSF), Delhi. He replaces DGP/HoPF Sandeep Rai Rathore. He was in the panel of three IPS officers recommended by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) as fit for appointment to the top post. The Tamil Nadu government has written to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to relieve Dr. Aggarwal from the BSF, official sources said.

In accordance with the Supreme Court guidelines in the Prakash Singh case, Dr. Aggarwal will have a minimum tenure of two years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he served as the Commissioner of Police, Chennai, where he launched various schemes, including Drive Against Drugs and ‘Kaaval Karangal’. He was also the Commissioner of Police in Madurai and Tirunelveli. Dr. Aggarwal was the State Police Nodal Officer of the Election Commission of India in the last Lok Sabha elections and Member-Secretary of the Tamil Nadu Police Commission.

Communal murders

As the Inspector-General of Police in the Crime Branch-CID, he supervised the probe conducted by the Special Investigation Division into a series of communal murders across the State and also the sensational train heist in which a north Indian gang broke into the coach of Salem-Chennai Express and took way ₹5.78 crore belonging to the Reserve Bank of India.

In his previous stint at the Centre, he worked in the Central Bureau of Investigation as its Joint Director in Chandigarh.

In the BSF, he served as the Commander, Eastern Command, responsible for more than 4,000 km of the challenging India-Bangladesh Border. Dr Aggarwal is the recipient of the President Police Medal for Distinguished Service and Police Medal for Meritorious Service. He is a native of Bathinda in Punjab, and got his doctorate from  Manonmaniam Sundaranar University.

Inordinate delay

A regular DGP/HoPF should have been appointed with effect from September 1, 2025, in place of the then incumbent, Shankar Jiwal, who attained superannuation. However, the process was delayed for various reasons, including a couple of contempt cases.