The Ministry of Home Affairs has conferred national honours on four officers of the Andaman & Nicobar Police for exemplary service, with Director General of Police Hargobinder Singh Dhaliwal, IPS (AGMUT 1997), receiving the President’s Police Medal for Distinguished Service, the country’s highest recognition for long and outstanding police work.
The award acknowledges Dhaliwal’s decades of operational leadership, investigative success, and policing reforms. His career spans high-stakes counter-terror operations, landmark criminal investigations, and organisational transformation in the island force.
In Delhi, he led probes into high-profile cases such as the murders of Sidhu Moose Wala, Soumya Vishwanathan, Radhika Tanwar, and Jigisha Ghosh, maintaining sustained engagement with victims’ families until convictions. He directed operations against the Indian Mujahideen, oversaw the arrest of fugitive gangster Deepak Boxer from Mexico in coordination with the FBI, and spearheaded the Moose Wala murder investigation that led to the recovery of sophisticated arms.
Dhaliwal’s leadership extended to joint operations targeting Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, and the Islamic State Khorasan Province, as well as international crackdowns with the CBI, Interpol, and FBI. Notably, he oversaw the arrest of Rajwinder Singh in Australia’s Toyah Cordingley murder case, a suspect carrying a one-million-dollar bounty.
As DGP of the islands, he has led the largest methamphetamine seizure in collaboration with the Indian Coast Guard and introduced sweeping reforms to boost policing efficiency, inter-agency coordination, and crime detection.
Three other officers were also recognised. Sub-Inspector V Satyawati received the Police Medal for Meritorious Service for swift and effective investigation in a high-profile POCSO case in Rangat. Assistant Sub-Inspector (GD) Mahali Urong of the India Reserve Battalion earned the same medal for his leadership in anti-poaching operations in the islands’ dense forests. Home Guard B.C. Naskar, serving since 1994, was awarded the Home Guard Medal for Meritorious Service for his long-standing role in law-and-order duties, disaster relief, and VIP security.
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