Crime & Punishment

A 1985-batch IPS officer, JK Tripathi takes over as DG, Tamil Nadu with several laurels in his bag. During his three-decade stints in several positions in the state, he has achieved unique distinctions. As Tiruchi’s Commissioner of Police, he bridged the gap between the police and public to prevent crimes through innovative schemes. He won the Prime Minister’s Award for Public Administration because of several exciting initiatives that included Beat Officers’ System, Slum Adoption Programme, and Complaint Box System. But he is as adept in solving heinous crime. When he was the Chennai Police Commissioner, the city was rocked by two “sensational bank robberies” at gun point. Tripathi took it on as a personal challenge, tracked down the five members of a North Indian gang, and shot them dead in an encounter. According to a media report, “While serving as DGP of Prisons, he roped in private participation to provide training to various income-generating skills to inmates of central prisons across Tamil Nadu, which kept the State on top of others in the country when it came to revenue generated through the prison industry. On the prison security front, he initiated the process of establishing solar power for uninterrupted power supply with the support of IIT-M (Madras) and also proposed installation of German-made mobile phone jammers.” He received the prestigious International Community Policing Award and the gold medal for Innovation in Governance.