Gafoor in Mumbai. (PTI)

Mumbai, June 13: The man who commanded the “encounter cop” band of the Daya Nayaks and Pradeep Sharmas against Mumbai’s underworld gangs has been given the job to protect the city from terrorists.

The state government today gave Mumbai a new police commissioner, removing Hasan Gafoor just 48 hours after Bombay High Court criticised the administration’s slowness in tightening security following the 26/11 attacks.

The new commissioner is D. Sivanandhan, a former economics teacher who was commissioner of the state intelligence department when the November 26-29 siege took place.

The 1976-batch IPS officer was joint commissioner (crime) in 1998-2001 when the police gunned down over 300 members of the Dawood Ibrahim, Chhota Rajan, Arun Gawli and Amar Naik gangs.

Like Daya, Sivanandhan too is said to have inspired a character in a film — Ram Gopal Varma’s Company.

Gafoor, a soft-spoken IPS officer from the 1974 batch, has been promoted to director-general and appointed head of the state police’s housing and welfare corporation.

The shuffle comes just before the government tables the Ram Pradhan Committee report on the 26/11 security lapses in the Assembly, probably on Monday or Tuesday. The committee is said to have questioned Gafoor’s co-ordination of the anti-terror response.

Secretariat sources said Gafoor’s exit was aimed at taking the sting out of the likely Opposition attack during the tabling of the report, but a government spokesperson denied this.

Additional chief secretary (home) Chandra Iyengar said: “Gafoor was due for a promotion…. I don’t quite see how it could be linked with the Pradhan Committee report.”

Gafoor echoed him. He told reporters: “'My promotion was due, so I got it. I’m happy with it and I don’t think I have been sidelined by being given a non-executive post.”

On the Pradhan report, he said: “I don’t know the contents. You people were there with me during the 26/11 operations and you have seen that I led the operation from the front.”

On the night of November 26, Gafoor had rushed to the Oberoi-Trident hotel where terrorists were holed up and stayed put there, after setting up a field control room.

Sivanandhan, on his part, battled Maoists in Gadchiroli district when he was posted in Nagpur and headed anti-Naxalite operations.

He was part of the team that probed the 1993 serial blasts, worked as joint director of the CBI and served as the Nagpur and Thane police commissioners. He has done a stint with the Intelligence Bureau.

In 2001, he had arrested diamond merchant Bharat Shah in the celebrated Bollywood-underworld nexus case, in which the statements of Preity Zinta, Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan were recorded.

The state government has also appointed acting anti-terrorism squad (ATS) chief K.P. Raghuvanshi as the unit’s new boss. The high court had asked why the ATS hadn’t got a new chief six months after Hemant Karkare was killed by the 26/11 gunmen.