Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Rakesh Balwal, who headed the National Investigation Agency (NIA) team that probed the 2019 Pulwama attack, was on Thursday appointed as the new Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) to J&K’s summer capital Srinagar, which has lately faced growing militant attacks.
Mr. Balwal has replaced SSP Sandeep Chaudhary, who was given the key position only ten months ago. Mr. Chaudhary, whose tenure saw a significant increase in militancy and targeted killings in Srinagar, was shifted and posted as the SSP-Cyber Crime Investigation Centre for Excellence.
Mr. Chaudhary’s tenure is the shortest of any police chief of the city in more than a decade. His tenure saw rare police action against protesting shopkeepers allegedly by cutting the locks of shops in Lal Chowk to dissuade a shutdown. Also, the protesting families of the Hyderpora encounter victims faced police action at midnight amid a power shutdown at the Press Enclave.
Mr. Balwal, who is a 2012 batch IPS officer, was moved from the Manipur cadre to the AGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram and Union Territory) cadre for a period of three years in a relaxation of policy in November this year. Earlier, he served the NIA on deputation and headed the investigation into the Pulwama attack, which left 40 Central Reserve Police Force jawans dead in 2019. He also worked with the American intelligence agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to look into the role of the Jaish-e-Muhammad in the Pulwama attack. Mr. Balwal is believed to be the mind behind the exhaustive 13,500-page NIA charge-sheet filed before a special court in J&K on the Pulwama attack.
