K Vijay Kumar, a former CRPF DG who headed the Tamil Nadu Police STF that killed forest brigand Veerappan, has been awarded the Padma Shri.
Kumar (74) is a 1975-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer from 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 persons who have rendered distinguished service.
"This is a tribute to all my teams with whom I have worked," Kumar told PTI when asked for his reaction.
A government citation said Kumar, now based in Bengaluru and Chennai, is renowned for his expertise in jungle warfare and counter-insurgency, and he is being awarded for being a "key architect" of strategic policing and major operations against Naxals and Veerappan.
Kumar, who was serving as the director of the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy in Hyderabad, was brought to the Central Reserve Police Force (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.
Kumar 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.
The veteran cop had also served as the chief of the Special Task Force (STF) of the Tamil Nadu Police that hunted down Veerappan, apart from being the Chennai police commissioner and the BSF inspector general in Kashmir.
Veerappan was killed in 2004 in a meticulously-planned operation called "Cocoon", led by Kumar, who wrote a book on the operation named "Veerappan: Chasing the Brigand"
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