O.P. Sharma

O.P. Sharma was an Indian Police Service officer of the 1962 batch from the Uttar Pradesh cadre who joined the Punjab Police on deputation in April 1988. He rose to head the force's intelligence wing as Director General of Police (Intelligence) and then to the top post.

Key moments

• 1 January 1996: World Sikh News reported that he took charge as Director General of Police, Punjab, replacing K.P.S. Gill, who had retired. He had himself reached retirement age in October 1995 and was on a one-year extension, and was the senior-most IPS officer in the state. That afternoon Chief Minister Harcharan Singh Brar held his first meeting with senior police officers under him, as a red alert had been sounded. Sharma pledged to keep the peace.
• September 2001: at Jalandhar, Sardool Singh, a retired SP and spokesman of the Zinda Shaheed Police Officers Association, a body of policemen facing human rights cases, named Sharma, then DGP (Intelligence), as the man who had "masterminded the whole plan" to eliminate what he called terrorism in the state. The association said it would ask the Supreme Court to book Gill, Sharma and the then SSPs, deputy commissioners and sub-divisional magistrates for alleged excesses. The Tribune reported these as the association's allegations, not findings, and noted that Rakesh Tejpal of the Union for Civil Liberties and Human Rights called the state's move to prosecute these officers politically motivated.
• Later: he was replaced as DGP by Sube Singh. Julio Ribeiro, a former Punjab DGP, told Outlook that Sharma's removal was one of the "biggest blunders", that Sharma was "straightforward, professional and a gentleman", and that he had done much to change the image of policemen who ran amok under Gill. Ribeiro said there was heavy pressure on Sharma to transfer those policemen back and that politicians pressed for his removal. These are Ribeiro's opinions; the article carries no reply from Sharma or the government and gives no date.

Remembered for: senior roles in Punjab's police leadership in the 1990s. Opinions of him run from the officers' association's charge that he planned the operation to Ribeiro's praise of his reforms. Neither is a court finding.