Assam's Special DGP (Law and Order) Kuladhar Saikia, a 1985 batch IPS officer, will take over from Mukesh Sahay as the State's police chief on May 1. Sahay retires on April 30. Saikia was among five senior IPS officers who were in the race for the DGP's post as reported by Indianmandarins earlier. The new DGP had been closely involved in anti-terror operations, including Operation Bajrang and Operation Rhino against the United Liberation Front of Assam in the 1990s. Much of his stint as superintendent of police was in militant hotbeds such as Nalbari and Kokrajar districts. Colleagues say Saikia came across as a humane officer even in the most critical of situations during "those terrible days". This was manifest in Project Prahari, an awareness initiative he had undertaken in the early 2000s to tackle witchcraft-related crimes. His drive to curb witch-hunting in Assam as 'an agent of change' was recognized as a case study in the Harvard Business Review. He has also been a great writer and won the Sahitya Akademi award in 2015 for his book 'Akakhor Sobi Aaru Anyanya Galpa (Picture of the Sky and Other Tales)'. He often turned his field experience into stories that have won awards and a sizeable readership. "Writing has helped improve my policing," he says. He has been a Fulbright scholar (for community leadership) from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000 and winner of several literary awards and also has a doctorate on crime and development from Guwahati Indian Institute of Technology. However, he isn't the first DGP of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre to have won the Sahitya Akademi award. Current Meghalaya DGP Swaraj Bir Singh won the award in 2016 for his Punjabi play 'Maseya di Raat (Moonless Night)' and former Assam DGP Harekrishna Deka had won it in 1987 for 'Aan Ejan (Another One)', a collection of poems. He will not be the first DGP to have won the Katha award for literature either. Deka had won it in 1995, five years before he did.