K Vijay Kumar, a former Director General of CRPF, who had led the Tamil Nadu Police’s special task force that had killed sandalwood smuggler Veerappan in 2004, will be conferred with the Padma Shri by President Droupadi Murmu on May 25 in a special investiture ceremony.
Kumar (74), is a 1975-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre. He retired from service in 2012.
The veteran cop is among the 113 recipients of the Padma Shri, the fourth in the series of India’s civilian awards, given to people who have rendered distinguished service.
Kumar is renowned for his expertise in jungle warfare and counter-insurgency, and is being awarded for being a “key architect” of strategic policing and major operations against Naxals and Veerappan.
The veteran cop was serving as the director of the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy in Hyderabad, when he was brought to the CRPF in 2010 by the then UPA government after the paramilitary force suffered its worst Naxal attack in Chhattisgarh that year.
A total of 75 CRPF personnel and a state police jawan were killed in a deadly ambush at Tadmetla in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district on April 6, 2010.
Maoist leader Kishenji was killed in November 2011 by the commandos of the CRPF’s CoBRA unit in West Bengal, when Kumar was the director general of the force.
He retired from service in 2012 as the CRPF DG. He was later appointed as a security adviser with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
Kumar also served as an advisor to the Jammu and Kashmir governor before being re-appointed as a senior security advisor in the MHA in 2019.
