TN top cop Shakeel Akhter, who shot Imami Ali, to retire today

CHENNAI: Top police officer of Tamil Nadu cadre and 1989 batch of the Indian Police Service (IPS), Shakeel Akhter, who was instrumental in gunning down Islamic terror operative, Imam Ali in Bengaluru after he escaped from police custody, will retire on Monday.

Akhter is presently heading the elite CID wing of the Tamil Nadu police.

The senior police officer and his team gunned down Imam Ali and four of his accomplices in an early morning operation in Bengaluru on September 29, 2002.

Imam Ali was behind the bomb attack on the RSS office at Chennai in 1993.

Imam Ali and his accomplice Hyder Ali had escaped from the Tamil Nadu police custody while they were being brought to a court in Tirumangalam, after snatching an AK-47 gun from the accompanying policemen as their armed accomplices had surrounded the police jeep in which they were travelling.

Shakeel Akhter had posted a woman police officer and a male police officer from Bengaluru as a newly-wed couple near the house where Imam Ali and his accomplices were suspected to be staying in hiding in Bengaluru. After they confirmed that Imam Ali was indeed staying in the house, the police team led by Akhter moved in and in a shoot-out, Imam Ali and his accomplices were killed.

The decorated police officer is given a personal security officer due to threats to his life.

With Shakeel Akhter retiring on Monday, he will be given a farewell parade at Rajarathinam Stadium, Chennai.

DGP prisons, Sunil Kumar Singh who is a 1988 Tamil Nadu cadre IPS officer, will also retire on Monday.