BHUBANESWAR/CHENNAI : M Nageshwar Rao, the interim director of the CBI, is an IPS officer from the Odisha cadre. He was the first officer in Odisha to use DNA fingerprinting in a crime investigation and solved a rape case in Jagatsinghpur district in 1996.
While serving as the SP of the Crime Branch, his investigation helped in the conviction of liquor don Surendranath Das, alias Belu, in the 1991 Cuttack hooch tragedy case in which around 200 people had lost their lives. However, allegation of financial impropriety in the purchase of uniform for firemen came up during Rao’s tenure as director of Odisha Fire Services.
Rao also has anti-insurgency experience and served as the DIG (Operations) of the Central Reserve Police Force in Manipur.Rao also had a stint in Chennai, which according to DMK President M K Stalin, wasn’t clean. Stalin on Wednesday claimed that Rao had courted controversy when he had met then Chief Minister O Panneerselvam in his office during his stint in Chennai.