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CBI officers who supervised the investigations into the rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata’s R.G. Kar Medical College and the killing of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar are among 31 personnel of the central agency awarded police medals on the occasion of the 77th Republic Day.
Joint Director V. Chandrasekhar, a 2000-batch IPS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has been awarded the coveted President’s Medal for Distinguished Service, according to the list issued by the government on Sunday (January 25, 2026).
As the Joint Director of the agency, the officer supervised the probe into the gruesome rape and murder of the trainee doctor in the Kolkata hospital, leading to the conviction of the main accused in the case within months of filing the chargesheet.
Superintendent of Police Amit Srivastava, Additional Superintendent of Police Mukesh Sharma, Sub-Inspector Pramod Kumar Yati, Assistant Sub-Inspector Chaman Lal and Head Constable Ramu Golla have also been awarded the President’s Medal for Distinguished Service.
Twenty-five officers from the agency have been awarded the police medal for Meritorious Service. This includes 2007-batch IPS officer C Venkata Subba Reddy, posted as joint director in the agency, and his batchmate Sadanand Shakarrao Date, who left the agency as DIG to join his cadre as inspector general in Police Headquarters, Uttarakhand.
During his posting in the Economic Offence Branch (EOB), Date handled alleged bank fraud cases related to Zoom Developer Group Parekh Aluminex Ltd, Vidhyavasini Group Cases of SBI, besides the MCX-SX case and the NTC case. The officer served in the Special Crime, STF and ACB, Mumbai units of the agency. He also handled the Narendra Dabholkar murder case, busted bribery racket in SEEPZ-SEZ, Mumbai, BECIL, CGST, among others.
Deputy Legal Advisor Manmohan Sharma; Additional SPs Baidyanath Samal and Kailash Sahu; Deputy SPs Rubi Choudhary, Manish Kumar Upadhyay, Anmol Sachan, Nishu Kushwaha, Arijit Sinha, Sharad Suresh Bhawar, Thahir Abbas P and Dharmendra Kumar are among those awarded the Police Medal for Meritorious Service (PMMS).
Inspector Dharmender, Programmer Deepti Vashista, ASI Vinod Kumar, Officer Superintendent Narikote Nandini, Head Constables Netram Chourasiya, Puran Mal Gujjar, Bhola Roy, Babu Varghese and Vikram Singh, as well as constables Sanjeev Kumar, Waikhom Rajesh Singh and Rupendra Kumar have also been awarded the PMMS.
Published – January 25, 2026 12:20 pm IST
