IPS Rajesh Pandey

IPS officer Rajesh Pandey retired as IG of Bareilly Range in Uttar Pradesh in May 2022. Currently, he is the nodal officer of the Uttar Pradesh Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA), a government agency responsible for development of expressways in the state.

A native of Allahabad (now Prayagraj), Rajesh Pandey did Master’s in Botany in 1982 from Allahabad University. He joined the Uttar Pradesh state police service as a deputy superintendent of police.

He was among the founding members of the elite UP STF (Special Task Force) when it was set up to deal with organised crime in 1998 and the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) in 2009 for anti-terror operations. He headed the electronic surveillance during Shriprakash operation and is credited with putting together the first surveillance unit for police.

He has been part of 70 police encounters so far. He has investigated major terrorist attacks in the state of U.P. He has been awarded the Indian Police Medals for Gallantry four times –in 1999, 2000, 2007 and 2016 – for Operation Bazooka, and for successfully interrogating the Faizabad and Varanasi terror attacks. Pandey went to the United Nations Peace Keeping Mission in Kosovo in 2008 and won the United Nations Medal for Peace Keeping.

After being inducted into the Indian Police Service (Batch of 2003 SPS), he was posted as Superintendent of Police at Rae Bareli and Gonda, and as SSP at Saharanpur, Lucknow, Aligarh and Meerut.Subsequently, he was posted on the post of Deputy Inspector General of Police (Security) in Uttar Pradesh.

He is fond of narrating stories from his police career on his YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/IPSRajeshPandey), which he started during the 
Covid-19 lockdown.