Ahmed Javed – Indian ambassador to Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
By Abhishek Singh Thakur
Javed is the second IPS officer to be selected for the diplomatic post after famous IPS officer Julio Ribeiro.
He was appointed as the ambassador in December 2015 and took charge in February 2016 after retiring from police service. He was appointed as the Police Commissioner of Mumbai on 8th September 2015. He was an IPS officer of Maharashtra cadre from 1980 batch.
Born on January 2, 1956 in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, Javed is well known for taking 1 rupee salary while serving in the police department. His father Qazi Mukhtar is a retired IAS officer.
Javed graduated in history honours from St. Stephen’s college, Delhi. He is married to Shabhnam. The couple has two kids Amer and Zara. Javed likes travelling, playing billiards, scuba diving and varied reading, especially history.
Javed served at various places during his 35 year police service. He had done a stint with Delhi Police also from 1983 to 1985. He served as superintendent of police (SP) in Buldhana and Nanded before being posted in Mumbai. Later he served as additional commissioner of police of the central region of Mumbai and then to south region of Mumbai in 2002-2005. After that he was promoted as joint commissioner of police and made in-charge of law and order section.
In the early 2000s, Javed had found himself at the centre of controversy when many people started talking about his regular presence at the parties of Bollywood celebrities.
News reports claim a police officer’s character in Madhur Bhandarkar’s movie Page 3 was also inspired by Javed.
He had been in news again in 2014 when Rakesh Maria, a junior from 1981 IPS batch, was made Mumbai police commissioner while he was the top contender for the post.
The then Congress-NCP government made him director general of home guards, which is considered non-serious posting.
When the Maharashtra government changed in 2014, the BJP-Shiv Sena coalition replaced Maria with Javed as the Mumbai Police Commissioner. Maria was shunted out to the home guards department.
(Abhishek Singh Thakur is a post graduate journalism student at Indira School of Communication, Pune)
