‘Police Patriarch Of Odisha’ Biswakesh Tripathy Passes Away

Bhubaneswar: Retired IPS officer Biswakesh Tripathy passed away at his residence in Odisha capital on Saturday morning. He was 93.

A condolence meeting was held at Police Seva Bhawan and senior officers, including DGP in-charge Arun Sarangi, paid their last respects to the departed soul. “The contributions of Biswakesh Tripathy will always be remembered. Our heartfelt condolences to his family and friend,” Odisha Police posted on X (formerly Twitter).

Tripathy joined the Indian Police Service in 1954 under the Odisha cadre and spent a major part of his career in the Paramilitary Organisations, CRPF and BSF. He began his career in the Central Reserve Police (CRP) in 1960 and was soon sent to the Naga Hills where terrorism was in full force. He returned to Odisha after three years and was posted as the Principal of the Police Training College at Angul. His next posting was as Rourkela SP when he quelled the communal riots in 1964. He returned to the CRP in 1967 and was  immediately sent to deal with the Hill Tribes Agitation in the Khasi and Garo Hills. Thereafter, he was also in charge of the battalion, which was sent to Hyderabad when the Telengana movement went out of control.

He then left for Gujarat amid the October 1969 Hindu-Muslin riots. Later his battalion was shifted to Chandigarh when the Punjabi Suba agitation spread all over Punjab. His role in Calcutta during the height of the Naxal movement is a lore in policing lexicons, according to historian Anil Dhir.

During the height of the Khalistani Movement, he was posted as the IG of the Border Security Force in July 1983. He was in charge of cordoning off the Golden Temple during Operation Bluestar.

Tripathy has authored more than a dozen books, of which six are collections of poems.  In his autobiography ‘My Life and Times in the IPS’, which was released in 2013, he has written about  his experiences in handling various volatile situations all over the country with deftness.