State names Ajay Kumar Thakur new police commissioner of Barrackpore replacing Alok Rajoria
Telegraph | 3 February 2025
The state government named Ajay Kumar Thakur the new police commissioner of Barrackpore replacing Alok Rajoria on Saturday.
In September 2022, Rajoria had replaced Thakur as the commissioner of the Barrackpore Police Commissionerate. Thakur had then been transferred to the state’s traffic police wing in the rank of deputy inspector-general.
The change came a day after a Trinamool Congress supporter was murdered in Naihati.
Senior officials in the state home department maintained that it was a routine transfer. But a section of Trinamool leaders in Barrackpore, an industrial township on the city’s northern outskirts, linked it to the murder of their party colleague.
Thirty-two-year-old Santosh Yadav was travelling in an e-rickshaw when a group waylaid the vehicle at Goyalapara in Naihati, dragged him out and began to beat him.
Once he fell, the attackers thrashed him with bricks before leaving the area.
The residents of the area rushed Yadav to Naihati State General Hospital, where doctors declared him dead.
While Trinamool’s Naihati MLA Sanata Dey blamed the BJP for the murder and even held former BJP leader and former Barrackpore MP Arjun Singh responsible for the crime, police ruled out any political connection in the murder.
“It was a fall out of rivalries between two groups,” Rajoria had said.
Besides the police chief, the postings of at least five assistant police commissioners of the Barrackpore commissionerate were reshuffled during the day.
“These are routine transfers and keep happening throughout the year. One shouldn’t read too much into these transfers and postings,” said a senior home department official.
Thakur’s choice was obvious, a section of senior police officers said. He was the detective chief of the Barrackpore commissionerate until he was promoted to be the police commissioner in 2022.
“He is aware of the crime scene in Barrackpore and political undercurrents. He was among a batch of 10 IPS officers who received the chief minister’s police medal for outstanding service in 2020,” said a senior IPS officer.
Besides Thakur, the state government also transferred Raj Narayan Mukherjee from his present posting as the police superintendent of state traffic police to the commanding officer of the state’s armed police battalion (second).