Mumbai, Jan 5 (IANS): After days of dilly-dallying, the Maharashtra government on Thursday appointed senior IPS officer Rashmi Shukla as the new Director General of Police (DGP) of the state, the first-ever woman to occupy the coveted post.

Shukla, a 1998 batch IPS officer, currently the Director-General of Seema Sashastra Bal (SSB), replaces DGP Rajnish Sheth, who retired on December 31.

She has also been a former Director of the State Intelligence Department (SID) and held other prestigious state and central postings. She had earned the ire of the erstwhile Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government for the alleged phone-snooping cases involving certain leaders.

Mumbai Commissioner of Police, Vivek Phansalkar, was handling the additional charge as DGP, as per an official announcement.

The move to appoint Shukla as the top cop came more than three months after the Bombay High Court in September 2023 quashed the two phone-tapping cases lodged against her in Mumbai and Pune during the previous government.

The first case pertained to allegedly tapping the phones of Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Uddhav Thackeray, and Nationalist Congress Party (SP) leader Eknath Khadse, while the second complaint involved tapping the phone of state Congress President Nana Patole.

She was also accused of leaking a secret report exposing an alleged nexus between some police officers and middlemen involved in a cash for transfers-promotions racket, which was prepared in 2020 when she headed the SID.

However, Shukla had rejected all the allegations of any wrongdoings and claimed that she acted in the interests of national security and public service.