The Maharashtra government on Saturday appointed Param Bir Singh, a 1988-batch IPS officer as Mumbai’s new Commissioner of Police.
The Home department issued an order on Saturday naming Singh as the city’s new police chief. Singh whose last posting was as Director General of the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) will take over from Sanjay Barve later Saturday.
Bipin K Singh, additional director general of the ACB will be acting DG until the further posting is announced, the home department order has stated.
The name of the new Mumbai CP was finalised in a high level meeting between chief minister Uddhav Thackearay, deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar and home minister Anil Deshmukh on Friday evening. Besides the six officers of the ranks of director general, a few names of the ranks of the additional general of police (ADGs) too were considered for the post. ADGs Rashmi Shukla, Sadanand Date, K Venkatesham were among the contenders for the post.
Outgoing Commissioner of Police Barve was given two extensions of three months each after his superannuation on August 31, 2019.
Before heading the ACB, Singh was Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) in the state police. He has also held important posts like that of Thane Police Commissioner, ATS additional commissioner, DCP in several important zones in Mumbai, and also Superintendent of Police in districts like Chandrapur and Bhandara.
Under Singh’s leadership, the Thane police cracked some of the biggest cases that were of national importance, such as the arrest of Dawood Ibrahim’s brother Iqbal Kaskar in an extortion case, Mira Road Call Centre case, Ephedrine drug case, CDR case and Army recruitment case.
Singh had courted controversy after he held a press conference on August 31 at state police headquarter last year on the arrest of activists with alleged Maoists links. In the conference Singh had read out letters allegedly written by these activists, arrested in June 2019. The Bombay High Court had come heavily on Singh for reading out the letters, which may be used as evidence.
The officer had also sparked controversy last December after he filed an affidavit in the High Court giving clean chit to the Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar in the irrigation scam.