Chennai: Zero-tolerance towards rowdies, says new top cop

CHENNAI: “I will not spare petty rowdyism and ‘katta panchayat’ (kangaroo court). Harassment of the elderly and women will be dealt with an iron hand. My priority will be to maintain law and order in Chennai city,” declared Shankar Jiwal, the newly appointed commissioner of police.
The additional directorgeneral of police-rank officer belonging to 1990-batch took charge from the outgoing commissioner Mahesh Kumar Aggarwal at a lowkey function at the commissioner’s office in Vepery on Saturday.
Hailing from Uttarakhand, Shankar Jiwal is a polyglot. During his six-year stint as south zone director of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), the zone had confiscated maximum quantity of heroin for six consecutive years. He has worked as DIG and then IG of internal security. He was awarded the President’s medal twice for his concept-based technical approach to issues.
Jiwal introduced an SMS-based monitoring scheme to track locked houses while he was the Trichy city police commissioner. He has had stints as additional director-general of police, Special Task Force (STF) and armed reserve unit.
Born on August 14, 1965, he has studied BE in mechanical engineering and a post-graduate diploma course in management.
Decades before the central government came out with its Vaahan scheme of tracking vehicles with the help of number plates, Jiwal, during his tenure as Madurai rural district SP, introduced digitization of daily situation report, and digitized vehicle management system so that police could locate any vehicle and get details based on registration numbers. Due to the initiative, police were able to seize a lot of stolen vehicles and those with fake registration number plates. Many sold vehicles still bearing old owners’ vehicles were also identified.