Garima Bhatnagar Gets DPHCL Charge as Delhi Police Reshuffles 41 IPS Officers

Garima Bhatnagar, a 1994-batch IPS officer of the AGMUT cadre, continues as Special Commissioner of Police, Economic Offences Wing, and has now been given additional charge as Managing Director of the Delhi Police Housing Corporation Limited, as part of a reshuffle of 41 IPS and DANIPS officers ordered this week.

The Economic Offences Wing investigates bank frauds, investment scams, corporate cheating and criminal breach of trust cases, and has grown into one of Delhi Police's busiest wings as digital financial fraud cases have multiplied across the capital. DPHCL, meanwhile, runs the force's residential and commercial housing stock for serving and retired personnel, a portfolio that involves land acquisition, construction contracts and allotment disputes spanning several thousand police quarters across the city. Combining charge of a high-caseload investigative wing with a corporation that manages physical assets and construction timelines is an unusual pairing, and one that will test how much time a single Special Commissioner can realistically devote to each.

Bhatnagar has held a string of senior postings in the AGMUT cadre, including stints as Special CP for Provisioning and Finance and Special CP for Intelligence before her appointment to EOW last year. She was conferred the President's Medal for Distinguished Service in 2025 in recognition of her contribution to policing operations, including security arrangements during the G20 Summit hosted in Delhi. She is among the more senior women officers currently serving in Delhi Police leadership, and her continued presence at EOW through this reshuffle, even as dozens of colleagues moved, signals the department's preference for continuity in a wing handling long-running financial fraud investigations.

The DPHCL charge was earlier folded into a separate Special Commissioner's portfolio before this reshuffle brought it under Bhatnagar's EOW desk, consolidating two demanding assignments under one officer rather than distributing the workload further. In the same order, Manish Agrawal, a 1996-batch officer, moves from Special CP, Traffic to Special CP, Protective Security Division, while Ajay Chaudhary, also 1996-batch, takes over Traffic in his place after previously heading the Protective Security Division himself, an effective swap between the two officers.

The order is the first major reshuffle since Anurag Kumar, also of the 1994 batch, took charge as Commissioner of Police, Delhi, in July. It touches nearly every rung of the force, from Special Commissioners down to Deputy Commissioners of Police at the district level, with David Lalrinsanga retaining Operations while picking up additional charge of women's safety and northeastern-region policing units, and K. Jegadesan moving into the Intelligence Division. The scale of the exercise, 41 officers reassigned in a single order, is being read within the force as the new Commissioner settling his own team into key operational and investigative wings.

EOW carries outsized institutional weight because it is the first point of contact for complainants in bank fraud and Ponzi-scheme cases that routinely run into hundreds of crores, and its officers coordinate closely with the Reserve Bank of India, the Serious Fraud Investigation Office and state economic offences units in other jurisdictions when cases cross state lines. Officers who have served there say the caseload has only grown as digital payment fraud has become more common, putting pressure on the wing to clear a backlog of pending investigations even as new complaints continue to arrive at a steady pace through the year.

The reshuffle order was issued by the Lieutenant Governor's office this week and takes effect with immediate effect, officials said, with several district-level DCP postings, including changes at North, South-East and Special Branch, also revised in the same order alongside the senior-level moves.