Your Journey, the Memories and the Legacy

DharmendraNarain Lal

Deputy Inspector General · Central Reserve Police Force · 2026

Thirty-three years. Eighteen postings. From frontiers in J&K, Punjab and the North-East, to the United Nations in Kosovo as a Peacekeeper, and back home.

That is the part a career can list. It says nothing about the singer, the artist, the man his batchmates still call first, or the father, husband, son and brother his family leans on.

Cheers to the incredible years, and to the second innings.

33Years of service
∞Memories & relationships
18Postings
🎬  See यादें · Memories The Safar · Journey Album
Shri Dharmendra Narain Lal with his wife
Farewell at the Directorate General, CRPF
The send-off → Farewell at the Directorate General, by DG Shri G. P. Singh, IPS
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यादें · In their own words

What people wanted to say to him.

Family, friends, batchmates, seniors and juniors. Thirty-three years produces a lot of people with something to say.

See all यादें →
▶ Watch this first
The compilation Hours of messages from across the world, cut into one film by Radhika. More are still coming in from family and friends.
Open the full memories page →
सफ़र · The Safar

Tracing back the Safar, the Eighteen Addresses.

Read in reverse: the most recent posting first, all the way back to where it started. What no list of places can show is what each one took, and who he was in it.

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The makingJharkhand
Prologue

Before the uniform, the traits were already there

Jharkhand

Nothing that came later was new. The CRPF just gave these traits somewhere to go.

HonestyIntegrityHard workUp at 4 a.m.DeterminationBadmintonAdventurousWittyEveryone's friendThe one they trusted
199324th Batch
24th BatchNeemuchTraining

A boy went in, an officer passed out

Training, Neemuch, Madhya Pradesh
Joined CRPF, June 1993

Through the hardest drills and obstacle courses he became the one who pulled others through, and kept the squad's morale up by singing.

1993–963 years
Assistant Commandant030 BNField

First posting: the Punjab frontier

Firozpur, Punjab
30 June 1993 – 09 July 1996

Three years that set the tone for the next thirty. Langar with the whole company. A young officer who ate with his men and looked after every person under his command. They noticed. Thirty years later, they still bring it up.

1995Firozpur years
Milestone

The posting that mattered most

Marriage

Mid-tenure, he got married. From that day every transfer order was addressed to two people, and the family became as mobile, and as adaptable, as the officer.

Sept 1996First child
Milestone

A son is born, and Papa is on duty

September 1996

His first child arrives. He is not there; he is at work. It took his son a good few years to understand that, and then it became the clearest lesson he ever got about what duty actually costs.

1996–971 year
AC030 BNField

First tour of the Northeast

Agartala, Tripura
10 July 1996 – 04 August 1997

Same battalion, opposite corner of India, and the first of several tours the Northeast would ask of him. Company command in counter-insurgency across Assam, Tripura and Nagaland.

1997–988 months
AC064 BN

Kolkata

West Bengal
05 August 1997 – 27 April 1998

New battalion, new city, barely time to unpack. His companies guarded the American and Russian Consulates, and at Unit HQ he ran the tactical training, weapon handling and conditioning for the battalion.

19986 months
AC064 BNField

Deep Nagaland

Mokokchung, Nagaland
28 April – 23 October 1998

Six months in the hills. Hard country, harder duty.

1998–996 months
AC029 BN

Kanpur

Uttar Pradesh
24 October 1998 – 04 May 1999

A short tenure with 029 Battalion, and then orders again.

1999–20012.5 years
AC → Deputy Commandant029 BN

Mathura: Radha comes to the world

Mathura, Uttar Pradesh
05 May 1999 – 30 November 2001

His command here covered the security of the Krishna Janmabhoomi and Shahi Idgah complex, one of the most sensitive sites in the country. In Braj came his first promotion, Deputy Commandant. And in 2000, in Radha's own land, a daughter was born. There was only ever one name in consideration: Radhika. The family was complete.

First promotionRadhika, born 2000
2001–02UN mission
Deputy CommandantUN MissionDeputation

Peacekeeper in Kosovo

United Nations Mission, Kosovo
01 December 2001 – 27 December 2002

Selected for the UN peacekeeping mission: a year keeping the peace half a world from home, under the blue flag. He served as Quarter Master in the Border Police and Chief Logistics Officer for the Kosovo Police, setting up police station infrastructure and recruiting international staff. India's reputation abroad travels in people, not statements.

2002–03Bawana
DC029 BN

Back home to Delhi

New Delhi
28 December 2002 – 16 April 2003

From Europe straight to Bawana. A short tenure on paper. The family stayed on considerably longer.

2003–0414 months
DC145 BN

Nagpur

Maharashtra
17 April 2003 – 11 June 2004

Fourteen months with 145 Battalion, at the geographic centre of a country he had already crossed twice.

2004–073 years
DC → Second-in-Command145 BNNDRF

The Pune years, and the NDRF

Pune, Maharashtra
12 June 2004 – 21 May 2007

Three settled years of school runs and family time, and another star: promoted Second-in-Command. The longest the suitcases had stayed in the loft so far.

Pune was also where the disaster work started, and it meant the settled years were only settled at home. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, with relief in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Mahad landslides in the 2005 Maharashtra floods. This was before the National Disaster Response Force existed as its own force: it was raised in 2006 under the Disaster Management Act, staffed at first by battalions deputed from the CRPF, which is how the same men were already doing the work a year earlier. He went on to help raise the 5th NDRF Battalion at Pune, training its specialist CBRN troops and leading their passing out parade.

2007–081 year
2IC037 BNField

Mangaldoi

Assam
22 May 2007 – 05 May 2008

A year on the north bank of the Brahmaputra, back in hard-field country with 037 Battalion.

2008–102 years
2IC037 BNField

Agartala, once more

Agartala Kotwali, Tripura
06 May 2008 – 12 June 2010

New culture, new language, new schools, new friends, genuinely hard at first for two kids. This is where the family learned its real skill: adaptability. Nothing after this felt foreign.

New cultureNew language→ Adaptability
2010–12Commandant
2IC → Commandant011 BNLWE Operations

Commandant, into the operations

Latehar, Jharkhand
13 June 2010 – 21 April 2012

Promoted Commandant, and sent into the forests of his own home state against Naxalism. An operations officer in his element: hardest terrain, highest stakes, leading 011 Battalion from the front.

2012–175 years
CommandantNSGDeputation

Five years with the National Security Guard

NSG, New Delhi
24 April 2012 – 28 April 2017

Deputation to the country's elite counter-terror force. Meanwhile Delhi finally became home: DPS Vasant Kunj and Sanskriti; then DTU and an M.Tech at IIT Delhi for Nayan, NIFT Fashion Communication for Radhika. The kids got their run-up because he had held the line for twenty years.

DPS · SanskritiDTU → IIT DelhiNIFT
2017–20DIG Ops
Deputy Inspector General, OperationsBastar · LWE

DIG Operations, Dantewada

Dantewada, Chhattisgarh
18 July 2017 – 21 July 2020

Promoted DIG and given one of the most volatile left-wing-extremism zones in the country. He also taught what he was living, lecturing on counter-insurgency doctrine at the Internal Security Academy, Mt Abu. Three years of operations in Bastar. At home, two grown children tracked every alert out of that district, frightened for him daily, and completely certain he was the right man there.

2020–233 years
DIGDirectorate General

Headquarters

CGO Complex, New Delhi
22 July 2020 – 12 June 2023

Three years at the Directorate General, steering from headquarters the force he had served in the field for a quarter of a century, and representing the CRPF at the Ministry of Home Affairs on force modernisation.

2023–26The last posting
DIGGroup Centre RanchiCurrent

Full circle at Group Centre, Ranchi

Sembo Dhurwa, Ranchi, Jharkhand
13 June 2023 – 31 July 2026

He ran the Group Centre as a township: quarters, healthcare, a Montessori school, and a plantation of over 50,000 saplings raised with the forest department. The last posting brought him back to Jharkhand, a short drive from where a boy once woke at 4 a.m. with big plans. The journey ends on the same soil it started on, in the campus where we are all standing tonight.

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Do you have a photo from any of these postings? Most of these years live only in other people's albums. If you served with him, or visited, or have one frame from a mess night, it belongs here.
तस्वीरें · The album

The day itself, and the thirty-three years behind it.

31 July 2026 at Group Centre Ranchi, and every posting before it.

विदाई · The farewell The guard of honour, the send-off at the Directorate, and everything in between.
सफ़र की तस्वीरें · Eighteen postings Packing crates, quarters, parades and the people in them.
सम्मान · Honours and decorations Thirty-three years, and he mentioned almost none of these at home.
3 medals 8 commendations the first in 2002, the most recent in 2026
पदक · Medals
प्रशंसा · Commendations
2011 2014jointly with the DG, NSG 2015 2019for election security
Commendation disc · Director General, CRPF
20232024 20252026
Commendation letter · Inspector General, Jharkhand Sector
प्रशिक्षण · Courses thirty-three years of still being taught something
वर्दी के परे · Beyond the uniform The parts of him that had nothing to do with rank.

He sings, and his batch will tell you he is the Mukesh of the course. He grows roses, and has the show prizes to prove it. He paints wildlife. He played badminton for two forces. Before any of it, he was a chemistry postgraduate from Ranchi, which is where this whole story starts and, thirty-three years later, where it ends.

🎶 Classical Bollywood vocalist, especially Mukesh 🌹 Terrace Garden and Rose Show winner, several times over, in New Delhi, Agartala and Ranchi 🎨 Wildlife painter 🏸 Badminton for the NSG and CRPF at the All India Police Games 🏃 Half marathon, 21.5 km in 1 hour 57 minutes 🧪 M.Sc. Organic Chemistry, first division, Ranchi University, 1988
Your photos are missing from this wall. Thirty-three years, and most of the pictures are still on other people's phones.
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आपकी याद · Your memory

अपनी याद · Add your Yaad

You served with him, trained with him, sang with him, or grew up around him. Write a line, send a photo, record a video. He will read every one.

यादें · Read what others wrote → 📷  Upload photos & videos