Hyderabad: The Telangana government has appointed Battula Shivadhar Reddy, the state intelligence chief, as the new Director General of Police (DGP). He will assume charge on October 1, following the retirement of incumbent police chief Jitender on September 30. Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy handed over the appointment order on Friday, transferring Shivadhar Reddy as DG, Coordination, and giving him additional charge as head of the state police force. In the normal course, he is scheduled to retire on April 30, 2026.

A 1994 batch IPS officer, Shivadhar Reddy became the first chief of the intelligence department after the formation of Telangana in 2014. He is credited with planning the operation that neutralised gangster Nayeem in 2016. In December 2023, the Congress government reinstated him as chief of intelligence in the rank of Additional DGP. Following his promotion in August 2024, he continued in the post in the rank of DGP.

Over his three-decade career, he has served in several key assignments at both district and state levels. He was SP of Nalgonda, Srikakulam, Nellore, and Guntur districts, and served as DCP (Traffic) in 2004. After the Mecca Masjid blasts and subsequent police firing in 2007, he was appointed DCP, South Zone. He also worked as commissioner in Visakhapatnam and was part of the UN peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.

A native of Tool-e-Kalan village in Ibrahimpatnam mandal of Rangareddy district, Shivadhar Reddy studied law at Osmania University and briefly practised as an advocate before clearing the civil services examination in 1994. His IPS cadre was originally allotted to Andhra Pradesh and later reassigned to Telangana after the state’s bifurcation.

BI Bureau