Rishi Kumar Shukla is new CBI chief

New Delhi, Feb 02: Rishi Kumar Shukla has been appointed as the new chief of the Central Bureau of Investigation. A high powered committee which met here today, appointed IPS officer Shukla as the new CBI director.

Shukla is the former DGP of Madhya Pradesh and was chosen by the panel comprising the Prime Minister, Leader of Opposition and Chief Justice of India. He will head the CBI for a period of two years.

Shukla is a 1983 batch Indian Police Service officer. He was previously the Director General of the Madhya Pradesh police. Prior to that he headed the state police housing corporation.

In all there were 75 names, but during the meeting on Friday, the list was brought down to five. Shukla's name featured along with that of R R Bhatnagar, CRPF chief, Sudeep Lakhtakia, NSG chief, Javeed Ahmed, National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Sciences director and A P Maheshwari, BPR&D chief.

The development assumes significance as earlier in the day, the Supreme Court said it was "averse" to the arrangement of an interim CBI Director and the Centre should "immediately" appoint a regular chief of the probe agency.

The post of CBI Director is "sensitive" and "important", and it is not good to keep an interim director of the agency for longer period, the top court observed and sought to know as to why the government has not made the appointment yet.

The post of the CBI chief had been lying vacant since January 10 after the unceremonious exit of Alok Verma, who had been engaged in a bitter fight with Gujarat-cadre IPS officer Rakesh Asthana over corruption charges.

Both Verma and Asthana had accused each other of corruption.