Ashwani Kumar, former Governor of Manipur and Nagaland, and ex-CBI Director, was found dead at his residence in Shimla on Wednesday, police said. He was 70. Kumar was found dead at his house in Brockhurst around 7 pm, an official said. The district police called it a suspected case of suicide. The police have shifted the body to the Indira Gandhi Medical College for a post-mortem examination, and initiated inquest proceedings under section 174 of the Criminal Procedure Code at the Police Station East in Chhota Shimla. Kumar was born at Nahan in Sirmaur district and joined the Indian Police Force in 1973. He was allotted the Himachal Pradesh cadre and while working as the district Superintendent of Police at Shimla in 1985, he was inducted in the newly created Special Protection Group (SPG), where he worked till 1990. In August 2006, he was appointed the DGP of Himachal and in July 2008, he became the first police officer from the state to become the director of CBI. He retired in 2010, after which he started teaching MBA students as a visiting faculty at several institutions. From March 2013 to July 2014, he served as the Governor of Nagaland and also held the additional charge of Governor of Manipur for some time. He was the director of the probe agency during its investigation into the Aarushi Talwar murder case. Unhappy with the line of investigation headed by then CBI Joint Director Arun Kumar- who had given a clean chit to Rajesh and Nupur Talwar-Kumar had trashed the findings and the case was subsequently transferred to the Dehradun unit. The Talwars were given a life sentence by a CBI court in 2013 but were acquitted by the Allahabad High Court in 2017.
