Thamarai Kannan, ADGP, retires today

Chennai: Additional director general of police P Thamarai Kannan will hang up his boots on Wednesday after more than three decades of service.He played a pivotal role in the special investigation team (SIT) that probed the 1998 serial bomb blasts in Coimbatore killing 58 people.Thamarai Kannan and his team apprehended 198 people including Al-Umma operatives in 1998 and 1999.The 1993-batch DSP rank officer also cracked the case of bureau-pulling with the arrest of Nagamani who posed a major threat to residents on Chennai’s outskirts. Thamarai Kannan worked as the state intelligence chief when he alerted juior officers to track and corner Kanchi don Shridhar Dhanapalan after he made a derogatory statement against V K Sasikala, the sidelined former interim general secretary of the AIADMKThamarai Kannan joined the police department in 1993 as a deputy superintendent of police (DSP) before he was elevated and conferred IPS officer status in 1998. A native of Virudhunagar studied MBA and holds a masters’ degree in Applied Criminology and Police Management from Cambridge in the UK.