Gyanender Singh Malik, the 1993-batch IPS officer who led the drive to deport illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in Ahmedabad as police commissioner, was appointed the director general of Gujarat Police on Saturday.
Malik was appointed Ahmedabad police chief in July 2023, after a stint as additional director general (ADG) of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), north and airport sector, both in Delhi, before which he was inspector general (IG) of the Gujarat frontier of the Border Security Force (BSF).
Early in his career, Malik also served in the United Nations’ Peacekeeping Mission in Kosovo for a year in 2002, where he was associated with war crime investigations.
Malik’s name was picked from a panel of three names sent to the Gujarat government by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) as per Supreme Court directions on appointing state police chiefs, top sources told The Indian Express.
Speculation about Malik’s appointment as Gujarat police chief had been doing the rounds since April 8 this year, when he was selected president of the Gujarat IPS Association. He was also a strong contender to succeed Vikas Sahay last year, alongside 1991-batch DGP Shamsher Singh and 1992-batch K L N Rao.
Rao held the DGP charge since December last year and is expected to remain chief of the CID (Crime and Railways), holding additional charge of prisons and correctional administration, charges he currently holds.
Malik starts his day with a game of badminton and has won medals in horse riding, tent pegging, and other racquet sports, sources said.
Ahmedabad police chief since July 2023
Originally from Faridabad, Haryana, Malik has been serving as Ahmedabad police commissioner since July 27, 2023. He was promoted to the DGP rank in April 2024.
As Ahmedabad police chief, Malik oversaw the detention and deportation of 465 illegal immigrants from Bangladesh last year, in a drive to clean up the shanties from the Chandola lake side. In the largest encroachment removal drive in Gujarat, 4 lakh square metres of illegal encroachments, including 12,500 residential, commercial and religious structures, were removed from the Chandola Lake are. A similar statewide drive he initiated, Operation Delta Hunt, is underway.
Under Malik, Ahmedabad came under 24,000 surveillance cameras set up by community participation, a police statement said.
An extensive police record
The statement added that Malik’s first posting was as additional superintendent of police (ASP) in Bhuj. He then served as superintendent of police (SP) of six districts (Dangs, Porbandar, Surendranagar, Ahmedabad Rural, Bharuch, and Kutch) and as inspector general (IG) of four ranges (Border, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, and Surat).
He has also served as aide-de-camp (ADC) to the governor of Gujarat, deputy commissioner of police (DCP) in the Crime Branch of Ahmedabad city, and as additional commissioner in Ahmedabad and Vadodara.
Malik has also served in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID)—crime and intelligence wings—and in the Anti-Corruption Bureau, the Prohibition and Excise Department, and as secretary in the Home Department.
Malik has been the recipient of the Police Medal for Meritorious Service and the President’s Police Medal for Distinguished Service.
Post vacant since last December
The head of police force post has been vacant since December 31, 2025, when the previous full-time DG and IG of Gujarat Police, the 1989-batch Vikas Sahay, retired at the end of his six-month extension, after serving for two years and 10 months. On the same day, the Gujarat government gave Rao additional charge of the top post.
While it was widely believed that Rao would, in time, be given the top post full time, as his date of superannuation is in 2027, and there is precedent of previous Gujarat Police chiefs serving in an interim capacity before being given the job full-time, the state government has decided to go in a different direction.
The Shamsher Singh conundrum
While the state government gave interim charge of the head of police force to Rao, who was, at that time in December 2025, the seniormost Gujarat cadre officer serving in the state, Shamsher Singh, his senior, was on January 2, 2026, prematurely repatriated to Gujarat, again sparking rumours of an extraordinary appointment even as he was no longer eligible to be appointed to the top post.
That was because the UPSC rules framed in September 2023 made clear that officers in contention for the top post of state police, “… should have residual service of six months or more from the date of occurrence of vacancy in the post of DGP (HOPF).” But Shamsher Singh was to retire in three months.
Singh, who was kept waiting for two months, was appointed Director of Civil Defence and Commandant General of the Home Guards on March 5. He superannuated on March 31, 2026.
G S Malik starts his day with a game of badminton and has won medals in horse riding, tent pegging, and other racquet sports, sources said. 
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