Delhi Police protest: Suspended ACP was an IIT grad, is Dhankhar’s PSO

Hours after he joined over 100 police officers in a protest outside the Delhi Police Headquarters, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Manasvi Vashishtha was suspended by the Ministry of Home Affairs. The MHA said departmental proceedings against him are contemplated; it did not specify the grounds for the proposed proceedings.

The development came after Vashistha protested transfer orders issued after a scuffle between lawyers and police officials at Delhi’s Shahdara police station on October 23. He was one of the two transferred. A 2019-batch DANIPS (Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu Police Service) officer, Vashishtha had earlier served as then Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar’s Personal Security Officer from April 2025 until the latter resigned in July 2025.

His career has included postings with the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and in the Delhi Police Security Unit. Born and brought up in Jaipur, he comes from a family of doctors. He pursued a degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, between 2009 and 2013.

He joined the SSB in 2016. During his four-year tenure with the force, from 2016 to 2020, he was posted in Jammu and Kashmir and Bihar. Vashishta subsequently joined the DANIPS as part of the 2019-20 batch. Following his initial training and posting in Delhi, he was transferred to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in 2022.

There, he served as Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) in Diglipur and Havelock before returning to Delhi in December 2024. In the national capital, Vashishta held several assignments within the Delhi Police. In December 2025, he was posted as ACP, Gandhi Nagar, where he served for approximately three months.

After his stint as Dhankhar’s PSO, he joined the Delhi Police Security Unit, where he was involved in security arrangements for the AI Summit and the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In March 2026, he was once again posted as ACP, Gandhi Nagar.

Vashishta is married and has two children, a three-year-old and a six-month-old. Soon after his suspension, he said: “‘Main aahat nahi hua hoon, mazboot ho gaya hoon (I am not hurt; I have become stronger)’. The law of land will follow and justice will prevail.” In an order marked ‘Most Immediate’, issued late Monday evening, the MHA said the competent authority, exercising powers under Rule 10 of the Central Civil Services (Classification, Control and Appeal) Rules, 1965, had placed Vashistha, an entry-grade officer, under suspension.

The order was also handed to Vashistha later in the evening. “During the suspension period, the officer’s headquarters will be Delhi, and he has been barred from leaving the headquarters without prior permission of the competent authority.

The officer will be entitled to a subsistence allowance equal to the leave salary he would have drawn on half-average pay or half pay, along with dearness allowance if admissible on that basis — subject to a certificate that he has not been employed in any business, profession or vocation for profit, remuneration or salary,” it added.

In a separate matter, the Delhi High Court refused to take suo motu cognisance of alleged threatening remarks made by ACP Vashishtha against lawyers during the protest outside the force’s headquarters. During the hearing, the lawyer urged a bench of Acting Chief Justice Nitin Sambre and Justice Sanjay Sharma to take suo motu cognisance of the police’s unlawful assembly outside the police headquarters on Monday as well as of the alleged derogatory language used by them against lawyers.

“Yesterday, police officials gathered, made unlawful assembly, and used derogatory language against the lawyer fraternity. They are threatening lawyers with arms… The derogatory remarks they have used are ‘kaale coat wale gunde’, ‘kaale coat ka behrupiya’ and ‘agar kisi vakeel ne ungli bhi laga di toh main apne baap ka nahi, agar poori AK47 uss vakeel mein nahi utaar di toh’,” the lawyer told the bench.