The IPS officer who resisted Ajit Pawar, Anjana Krishna, is accustomed to overcoming obstacles

Growing up on the outskirts of a region of Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram district that has gained notoriety for illegal granite mining, Maharashtra-cadre IPS officer Anjana Krishna V S made headlines when he was “reprimanded” by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar while taking action over alleged illegal mining.

She is aware of the mining problem. Our home is around 1.5 kilometers from Mukkunnimala, the site of significant illegal quarrying throughout the years. Her father, V R Viju, claims that she is a girl who grew up seeing this.

According to her family, Anjana Krishna is the first IPS officer from the Vilavoorkal village panchayat in Thiruvananthapuram. Her father owns a hollow brick production company in addition to being a part-time contractor in the building industry. Seena, her mother, works as an Upper Division Clerk at Thiruvananthapuram’s district court. Arjun Krishna, her younger brother, is a student of medicine.

Anjana is the first child of district court personnel to be accepted into the civil service and the first successful candidate from this area. Our lives are routine. She believes in living an honest life and is quite forthright and direct. However, she doesn’t have a tendency to bother or harm people,” Viju adds.

“Happy and cool.”

According to the father, Anjana Krishna has remained “very cool and happy” despite the event with Ajit Pawar. She never discusses business-related issues with us. We are fortunate that no one criticizes our daughter in relation to the situation. After the news hit the headlines, I was flooded with calls from friends and family. “Everyone talks about my daughter with pride,” he says.

In the video that went viral on Thursday, Pawar calls on a local NCP worker’s phone to talk to Anjana Krishna, the Karnala Sub-Divisional Police Officer, while she is in Solapur’s Kurdu village to investigate a complaint of illegal excavation of ‘murrum’ soil that is used in road construction. “Suno, mai Deputy Chief Minister bol raha hoon aur aapko aadesh deta hoon ki voh rukwao” indicates that he is telling her to stop.

Recently assigned to Maharashtra, Anjana Krishna requests that he call her on her cell phone since she doesn’t recognize his voice. She asks, “What is the evidence that this is the Deputy CM speaking?”

Since she was a teenager, she has aspired to be an IPS officer, and this December, she turns 28. “I had originally intended for her to become a doctor, but we supported her when she revealed her college career plan,” recalls Viju.

Anjana Krishna began training to fulfill her dream of becoming a police officer immediately after graduating with a degree in mathematics from NSS College, Neeramankara in Thiruvananthapuram. Instead of enrolling in a postgraduate program, she joined a upsc test coaching center in the capital city of Kerala.

Fourth time’s the charm

However, it was not a simple path, and Anjana failed the preliminary exams on her first three tries. But in 2022, she passed the test on her fourth try, earning a rank of 355 overall.

“Normally, if someone fails an exam three times in a row, they would be disappointed. However, her father claims that she was always optimistic about achieving success and getting her ideal job. Viju also says that the family never raised concerns about the money that was spent on her coaching during this period. “But after she failed to clear the UPSC exam in her third attempt, I asked her to appear for other examinations also. Then she wrote the Railway Recruitment Board exam for Clerk and got selected,” he says.

However, during the interview for the RRB job, she sought six months’ time to join as she was awaiting the result of her fourth try in the UPSC exam. Days later, she found that she had finally cracked UPSC — and IPS was her first choice.

Anjana enrolled in Indira Gandhi National Open University’s (IGNOU) postgraduate criminology program after becoming an IPS officer. She spent six months working as an intern for a Malayalam newspaper while undergoing UPSC test coaching in Kerala.