Hyderabad: Director General of Telangana Prisons V.K. Singh was suddenly transferred as commissioner of printing and stationary. The order to transfer the 1987 batch officer was issued on July 6 and came as a surprise to Mr Singh as his transfer was not on the cards.
The government appointed former Cyberabad police commissioner and additional DG, railways and road safety, Sandeep Shandilya, in Mr Singh’s place.
Sources in the IPS network told Deccan Chronicle that the transfer order had come from the top bosses in the government.
Speaking to this newspaper, Mr Singh, who took charge on Monday as commissioner for printing and stationery, said, “I was on leave when the orders were issued. It took me by surprise because the department I am given is considered as a punishment for an officer. I was not expecting such a transfer, I am shocked. I was not informed. I have been given a defunct post.”
Mr Singh, a Bihar cadre officer, talked about the reforms he introduced in the prisons department. “I have changed the concept of prisons. The place no longer treats prisoners the way it did earlier, when Justice V R Krishna Iyer described the treatment of prisoners in India as a ‘crime of punishment’. The prisons are now reforming jail inmates. Many initiatives have been introduced such as Unnati, Vidhya Dan, which have benefited the convicts. Besides this, the death rate in prisons has dropped to single digits — eight in 2018. The department has cracked down on corruption.”
Mr Shandilya, an IPS officer of the 1993 batch, is likely to take charge this Thursday.
Last week, senior IPS officer M. Nageswar Rao, who was CBI additional director during the CBI vs CBI fight, was sent to a loopline post as Director-General, Fire Services, Civil Defence and Home Guard. A government order on the transfer said it had been done by temporarily downgrading the post of additional director-general.
Before that, the then AP Director-General of Police R.P. Thakur was shunted to the printing and stationery department by the Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy government.
