Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore

Sangliana bids farewell to media

By Our Special Correspondent

Bangalore June 30. The Director General of Prisons, H.T. Sangliana, became one of the few senior police officers to host a farewell lunch for the news media on Monday, on the eve of his retirement.

Mr. Sangliana became popular with the media during his tenure as Bangalore City Police Commissioner, but was very much in the news even earlier. Two Kannada movies were made based on the "exploits" of the man who came to be known as "Supercop'.

While he headed the City police force, there was news almost every day for those on the crime beat. Reporters covering the information technology scene got an example of how Mr. Sangliana did things when he used a big sledgehammer to symbolically smash pirated CDs. It was to signify Bangalore being declared a "zero piracy zone" in regard to intellectual property, including computer software. Addressing the media during the lunch hosted by him, Mr. Sangliana declared that he was not about to join politics. If he ever did in future, it would be to "prove wrong the saying that politics is the last resort of the scoundrel.'' His services were available after retirement to the victims of crime and injustice, he said. He also repeated his appeal to successive governments to "allow the forest brigand, Veerappan, to surrender. No efforts to capture him are likely to succeed easily.''

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