Bespectacled and balding, the Centre’s pointsman for anti-Naxalite operations has the facade of a genial grandfather. But it would be a mistake to go by the looks of Vijay Raman, the highly decorated Special Director General of CRPF.

His long resume includes hunting down dacoits in the Chambal ravines as SP (Bhind) to killing the mastermind of the 2001 Parliament attack, Jaish-e-Mohammed Kashmir chief Shahbaz Khan a.k.a Ghazi Baba. Now the 1975-batch IPS officer has been tasked with eliminating the Maoist threat sweeping the country.

That the 58-year-old Kerala-born officer is perhaps the best task commander for counter-rebel operations is not only recognised by Home Minister P Chidambaram. Then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and home minister L K Advani had personally called up Raman to congratulate him after he killed Ghazi Baba as Inspector General of the BSF, in Srinagar on August 30, 2003. To date the identity of the man who leaked the whereabouts of Ghazi Baba is only known to Raman.

The task to neutralise Naxalites is Herculean, and Raman comes this week to Raipur — where he once served as SP — to coordinate the joint operations against Maoists in all the seven Naxalite-affected states. He will be reporting directly to Home Secretary G K Pillai and Chidambaram and will have the authority to summon and deploy the paramilitary forces at his disposal.

A native of Alwaye in Kerala, Raman has been entrusted with sensitive cases throughout his career. As Additional Director General of Police (ADGP), CID, he probed Professor H S Sabharwal’s death in student violence at Madhav College in Ujjain as well as a pornographic CD purportedly showing BJP organising secretary Sanjay Joshi.

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