Many twists, turns behind DGP’s extension

But by 11 pm, just an hour before his becoming an exDGP, the order appointing him as the state police chief was cleared by the Raj Bhavan, thus giving him an automatic extension of two years as per the Supreme Court order. 

When Rajendran’s residence witnessed happy scenes, the house of another senior IPS officer, who lobbied hard to be the police chief, presented a picture in contrast. 

The scenes behind Rajendran’s appointment, which were more public than ever before, exposed the role of dirty politics, lobbying and intra-party feud in appointment of senior police officers in the state.

However, Rajendran managed to tide over various hurdles thrown in his way by one of his colleagues, who raked up the gutka scam, which the Income Tax department unearthed when he was the city police commissioner. Now, even the Opposition Leader has objected to the extension given to Rajendran, linking him with the gutka scam.

“They tried everything to get Rajendran out of the job. But, the present dispensation was not keen to replace him. Things would have been different if J Jayalalithaa was alive,” a senior IPS officer on request of anonymity told DTNext. 

Officials said the power struggle in the IPS cadre could easily put politicos to shame. “If you want to know where an officer belongs, the best thing is to look at his service record and co-relate it with the corresponding political regimes. This is true in most of the cases, barring some exceptions,” another senior IPS officer said.

TK Rajendran, who was appointed as head of the Police department on his day of retirement and his colleague DGP S George (Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Services) have sent legal notices to a private news channel of tarnishing their reputation based on unverified documents said to have been seized during ‘gutka’ raids in the city. 

The 8-page legal notice claimed that the channel has caused damage to the reputation of the said officials by telecasting a report on June 27, which was entirely false, and concocted. The notice demanded an unconditional apology for making such baseless allegations against the officers and compensate the irreparable loss and damage caused to their reputation within a week’s time since the receipt of the notice which was dated June 30. It also warned of legal action.