New Delhi: The year was 2010. Security forces were conducting a routine check around Srinagar’s Lal Chowk area when they spotted two armed men who later turned out to be Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists. In a fit of panic, the terrorists fired shots and lobbed grenades, killing a police officer and injuring several others, including journalists.
They then managed to flee to Srinagar’s Punjab Hotel, where they took roughly 100 tourists hostage. Faced with this security challenge, then-J&K director general of police (DGP) Kuldeep Khoda and then-Kashmir inspector-general of police (IGP) Farooq Ahmed turned to Indian Police Service (IPS) officers Nalin Prabhat and Mohammed Irshad for help.
Khoda said Prabhat deployed his best officers from the 180 and 185 battalions of the CRPF from Tral to ensure the success of the rescue operation. “I called him (Prabhat) straightway to the spot after I received inputs from a hostage at Punjab Hotel. We need officers such as him who are not afraid of taking larger strategic calls,” the former DGP told ThePrint.
Fourteen years later, Prabhat is set to assume charge as J&K’s police chief. He will take over from DGP R.R. Swain following the latter’s retirement on 1 October.
Prabhat, then posted in the South Kashmir region as CRPF DIG, played an important role in the Punjab Hotel rescue operation. The area of the hotel did not fall under his jurisdiction, but he brought his battle-hardened skills and best men to get the job done.
The rescue operation made headlines and even prompted high praise from then-Union home minister P. Chidambaram — more so because it came less than two years after LeT terrorists used hostage tactics during the 26/11 terror attacks.
His contemporaries and colleagues describe Prabhat as a “man of action” with “few but strong words” and someone “obsessed with operations”.
Commissioned as an IPS officer in Andhra Pradesh in 1992, Prabhat was appointed Jammu and Kashmir police chief after a change of his cadre.
Over the years, he has worked in Naxal hotbeds along the Andhra Pradesh-Odisha border and in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh. He has also had multiple tenures in various capacities in Jammu and Kashmir.
“Prabhat is one of the few officers who is primarily an operational officer. He is good with academic research and analyses but seems disinterested in planning and carrying out operations on paper. Instead, he is always itching to hit the ground running,” said a senior police officer in Andhra Pradesh, speaking to ThePrint.
Born in Himachal Pradesh to a police officer who climbed up to inspector-general (IG) rank, Prabhat graduated from Delhi University and is an MA from St. Stephen’s College.
“Prabhat is an outstanding field officer and suited for the role in J&K. Police’s role is more in the field than on the desk here. Prabhat is cut out for this role,” said Khoda.
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Greyhounds days, ‘man of few words’
Senior police officers who served in undivided Andhra Pradesh recalled that in the 1990s, Maoist attacks peaked in the Andhra Pradesh-Odisha-Chhattisgarh region, with IPS officers first groomed as assault commanders in the state police’s anti-Maoist force, Greyhounds.
Prabhat was among the youngest officers in his Greyhounds’ role and later also served as superintendent of police (SP) in two coastal districts — Karimnagar and Warangal.
In light of the 1993 assassination of IPS officer K.S. Vyas, who set up Greyhounds, by the Liberation People’s War Group (PWG) of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist), senior police officers told ThePrint that Prabhat, too, faced threats from Maoists at the time.
“He was one of a kind,” an Andhra Pradesh cadre IPS officer told ThePrint.
Another officer, recalling Prabhat’s tenure as SP, recalled when the latter was to give what his subordinates expected to be a speech of assurance to some villagers, Prabhat merely told them: “I don’t speak much, and I will show in my actions what can be done.”
Another senior police officer said Prabhat could be considered one of the foremost operations experts in the country. “His ability to read maps, dissect fieldcraft tactics, intelligence inputs and lead a team of personnel is unmatchable.”
“Only a few officers can match his operational instinct and analytical sense with technical intelligence, especially in field operations. He is a go-getter,” the officer added.
Srinagar op, Dantewada massacre & gallantry medals
Prabhat’s first assignment at the central level was a short stint in the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF). Next, he served as a commandant with the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) in Srinagar and Ladakh for nearly three years. His first major assignment was in the South Kashmir range, where he was appointed DIG (Operations), CRPF. He served in the role for three years before his transfer to Chandigarh in the same capacity.
Prabhat was roped into the Punjab Hotel rescue operation during his South Kashmir posting. When commandos started entering the upper storeys of the hotel, terrorists holding hostages downstairs reportedly fired through the gaps in the wooden floors. The commandos had to improvise — they placed bulletproof seals, which they ripped off the windows of CRPF patrol vehicles parked on the street, on the floors to avoid getting hit.
After the terrorists were gunned down, Chidambaram applauded the security forces for the “brilliant operation, executed with great skill and patience”.
Two months after the Srinagar operation, Prabhat was moved to Dantewada as CRPF DIG (Operations) in March 2010. Just a month later, Maoists massacred 75 CRPF and one state police personnel in Dantewada. An internal Court of Inquiry (CoI) indicted Prabhat for ordering a three-day area domination exercise only three days after taking charge. The CoI also indicted Ramesh Chandra, the IG of the Bastar region, and two other officers.
Although the CoI took note of Prabhat’s tough stance on Naxalism and vast experience as DIG (Operations) in militancy-hit South Kashmir, it found that launching such a large-scale operation in less than a week of arrival did not give him enough time to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the troops under his command.
The CoI also said the Naxal belt in Bastar was a different operational area than Kashmir.
At the time, Chidambaram said that “one IG, two DIGs and an SP” had “thoughtlessly planned” the area domination exercise.
However, a separate probe by a committee headed by former Director General of BSF E.N. Rammohan suggested that the three officers had little role to play in the failure to stop the ambush. On his part, Prabhat defended his action, saying he ordered the area domination exercise only after informing Chandra, who retired on 30 April the same year.
Shunted out of an operational role in Chhattisgarh, Prabhat moved to Chandigarh.
He served nearly two and a half years in the training and intelligence section of the force in Chandigarh and J&K before being posted in the Maoist belt in Maharashtra as IG for anti-naxal operations. Later, he was back in Kashmir as IG (Operations).
He returned to the cadre briefly and served as chief of Greyhounds and Octopus, the state’s anti-Maoist and anti-terror units, respectively.
In September 2019, he returned to CRPF as IG, landing in controversy over another botched operation on the border of Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur and Sukma in April 2021, which resulted in the deaths of 22 security personnel. At the time, Prabhat was IG (Operations) and reportedly supervised operations in Bastar in the months leading up to the ambush.
Prabhat is the recipient of seven awards, including three police medals for gallantry.
He was promoted and posted as CRPF head in Jammu and Kashmir before the Centre brought him to Delhi as chief of the National Security Guard (NSG), with his tenure now cut short owing to his appointment as J&K DGP.
The awards, however, did not come without controversy. Prabhat received one of the gallantry medals for the deaths of three top leaders of the PWG of the CPI(M-L) in Telangana in a 1999 encounter when he was Karimnagar SP. Along with Prabhat, two other top cops — the then state intelligence chief A. Shiv Shankar and then deputy inspector general of the special intelligence bureau Sriram Tiwari — were felicitated in 2003.
Some IPS officers, however, alleged that the trio was not present in the Koyyur forests in Karimnagar during the 2 December 1999 encounter and that Tiwari was on leave that day.
As one lawyer moved the Telangana High Court, questioning the state government’s recommendation and the Union Ministry of Home Affairs’ (MHA’s) consideration of the officers without “minimum verification”, the court asked the MHA to reconsider awarding the trio while maintaining it was not the platform to order a withdrawal of the medals.
“Take away the two unfortunate events in Chhattisgarh, and Prabhat has the most decorated CV for an IPS officer to lead the police force in Jammu and Kashmir,” said one of the IPS officers quoted earlier.
“He is the perfect fit for a DG in Kashmir — he knows the place inside out and is an expert in city operations,” another IPS officer said. Adding, “He has served in the Naxal theatre, J&K, and the Northeast. He is the only officer who started as a commandant and survived in key positions through his career as DIG, then IG, ADG, and now will be the DG.”
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)