SSB chief Rashmi Shukla appointed as Maharashtra DGP

MUMBAI: The Maharashtra government on Thursday appointed Rashmi Shukla, a 1988-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer as the state’s next director general of police (DGP), the first woman police officer to hold the top police post in the state.

Mumbai police commissioner Vivek Phansalkar is holding additional charge as DGP Maharashtra after Rajnish Seth retired on December 31.

Shukla’s appointment as Maharashtra DGP less than a year after she was appointed in March last year as director general of the Sashastra Seema Bal, the central police force deployed along the border with Nepal. The senior police officer turns 60 in June but is expected to get a two-year term

The senior police officer’s previous tenure as the state intelligence commissioner turned controversial following accusations that she illegally ordered tapping of Opposition leaders’ phones during the Devendra Fadnavis-led government between 2014 and 2019. FIRs were also registered against her when the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi came to power.

The first of the three cases was registered by Mumbai cyber police on March 26, 2021, for leaking a classified report drafted by Shukla that allegedly contained crucial details of some individuals who acted as middlemen for facilitating transfers and securing desired postings for senior police officers in exchange for money, using their political connections. This case, investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation, was closed in August last year.

In September last year, the Bombay high court quashed two other cases lodged against Shukla, Maharashtra’s former intelligence chief. In one FIR in Mumbai, Shukla was accused of illegally tapping the phones of Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut and Nationalist Congress Party leader Eknath Khadse; while the second one in Pune accuses her of tapping Congress leader Nana Patole’s phone.