'Medal for Excellence in Investigation' to 151 police personnel

New Delhi, Aug 12 (IANS) As many as 151 police personnel, including 28 women officers, have been awarded the Union Home Minister's 'Medal for Excellence in Investigation' for the year 2021.

According to the ministry, among the personnel receiving these awards, 15 are from the CBI, 11 each from Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra Police, 10 from Uttar Pradesh Police, nine each from Kerala and Rajasthan Police, eight from Tamil Nadu Police, seven from Bihar Police, six each are from Gujarat, Karnataka and Delhi Police and the remaining from the other states and Union Territories (UTs).

The women awardees are from Chhattisgarh, Goa, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, UT of Ladakh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and two from the CBI.

Five officials from the National Investigation Agency (NIA) have also been felicitated with the award while a Delhi Police Inspector late Satish Chander Sharma has been given the award posthumously.

The NIA officials who were awarded the medal include Anurag Kumar, currently holding the position of DIG in the agency and who has worked extensively on ISIS cases. He was the officer who found that the accused persons had formed an organisation 'Junood-ul-Khilafa-Fil-Hind' (a group seeking to establish Caliphate in India and pledging allegiance to ISIS/ISIL).

Similarly, Rakesh Balwal, SP, NIA, who has been instrumental in preparing the 13,800 pages charge sheet in the February 2019 Pulwama terror attack case on the CRPF convoy which led to the death of 40 troopers is also among the five felicitated NIA officers.

Another awardeee, Vijay Kumar Shukla, Additional SP, CBI, has probed the Badaun suicide case in the CBI's Special Crime Unit. He has also been tasked to probe the death of Dhanbad ADJ Uttam Anand recently. He is currently camping in Jharkhand to probe the case.

Another awardee, Sameer D Wankhede is the Zonal Director of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) Mumbai and has brought down several drug lords and drug kingpins in the city. In September last year, he started the drug related probe relating to the death of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput.

His team arrested several people related to the drugs trade and also filed a charge sheet against Sushant's girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty and her brother Showik Chakraborty. The two are currently out on bail. The NCB under him also questioned several Bollywood A listers including Deepika Padukone, Sara Ali Khan, Shradhaa Kapoor, Rakul Preet Singh and several others in connection with the case.

Last year, 121 police personnel were felicitated with the medal.

The medal was constituted in 2018, with the objective to promote high professional standards of investigation of crime and to recognize such "Excellence in Investigation" by investigating officers.