Director-general of police Rashmi Ranjan Swain on Monday visited the martyrs’ memorial on his last day in office on Monday to pay tribute to the security personnel who sacrificed their lives to fight insurgency in Jammu and Kasmir.

The gesture is being seen as a searing parting shot by an officer who apparently faced insult at the hands of the government in the run-up to his retirement.

“When I am retiring, I feel I could have died in this journey.…Several of my colleagues... lost their lives,” Swain told reporters.

Swain’s tenure as DGP lasted 55 days although he officiated as in-charge DGP for nine months.

PDP leader Waheed Para, who spent 18 months in jail for alleged militancy links, expressed his rage on X. “A famous quote once thrown at us by fellow Kashmiris is now aimed at outgoing DGP RR Swain: ‘How do you sleep at night?’ You criminalised thoughts, weaponised policing, and destroyed lives for your rise. I remember the darkness of the cells and the freezing temperatures I endured under your orders — just like thousands of others,” Para said in the post shared by PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti.

Swain, a 1991-batch IPS officer from Odisha, is believed to have called the shots in the security establishment after his appointment as the CID chief in 2020 months after the scrapping of special status. He was known for his hard line but politicians dared not to speak against the CID for fear of being hounded until Mehbooba’s daughter Iltija last year accused the police’s intelligence wing, then helmed by Swain, of persecuting “Kashmiris like the Gestapo of Nazi Germany”.

Nalin Prabhat, DGP (law and order), has taken over as the new DGP.