Senior Tamil Nadu IPS officer alleges plot to eliminate her

ADGP in Tamil Nadu alleges attempt on her life after exposing police recruitment irregularities, calls for unbiased investigation.

An Additional Director General of Police in Tamil Nadu has alleged that an attempt was made on her life after she exposed serious irregularities in police recruitment.

In a complaint addressed to Tamil Nadu Director General of Police and Head of Police Force Shankar Jiwal, Kalpana Nayak, a senior IPS officer, called for an “unbiased” investigation into a fire that gutted her chamber in Chennai on July 29, 2024. The incident, she said, occurred days after she flagged discrepancies by the Tamil Nadu Uniformed Services Recruitment Board (TNUSRB) in implementing communal reservation in the recruitment of Sub-Inspectors, constables, prison warders, and firemen.

In her complaint, accessed by The Hindu, Ms. Nayak, then ADGP, TNUSRB, said the irregularities pointed out by her had averted an adverse order from the Madras High Court and the resultant embarrassment to the State government. But it had also put her life in danger and caused damage to government property, she added.

She alleged that her detailed note “on the major fallacies in the applicability of communal reservation” in the selection for appointment to the post of Sub-Inspectors and other ranks was “ignored” in March last year.

However, inquiries by The Hindu revealed that the then DGP of TNUSRB had formed a sub-committee to look into the discrepancies and revise the final list of selected candidates. While disposing of a writ petition raising the flaws in recruitment, the Madras High Court had directed the authorities concerned to rectify the selection list.

On July 29, 2024, minutes before Ms. Nayak reached the TNUSRB headquarters at Egmore in Chennai, she received a call from a senior police officer asking her not to come to office as a fire had broken out in her chamber. By then, she had reached the premises. “I visited my chamber, only to be exposed with utmost shock and dismay on seeing my charred chair...it was apparent that if I had reached office a little earlier, I would have lost my life. The sequence of events that followed after my pointing out the major fallacies not only in the current selection/recruitment, but also during the previous years, has culminated in endangering my life,” she said in her complaint. Incidentally, she was supposed to check and clear the revised list of candidates on that day. 

The fire, which was said to have been triggered by a short circuit in the air-conditioning system, had destroyed her office.