Most people who search for the Mridul Kachawa IPS biography are looking for one of two things. Either they want the quick facts about a decorated Rajasthan police officer who became famous for operations in the Chambal ravines. Or they’re UPSC aspirants who’ve heard his story and want to understand exactly how a middle-class boy from Bikaner cleared CA, CS, and UPSC back-to-back while working a corporate job in Mumbai and studying in Delhi on a tight budget.
If you’re in either camp, you’re in the right place. This biography doesn’t just list facts. It tells the full story, including the parts most articles skip.
Who Is Mridul Kachawa IPS?
Mridul Kachawa is a 2015-batch IPS officer of the Rajasthan cadre. He’s currently posted as Superintendent of Police (SP), Nagaur, Rajasthan. Over the course of his career he’s earned a national reputation as a fearless, results-driven officer whose work in Chambal earned him the nickname Rajasthan’s Singham, and whose story of clearing three difficult national exams, including the CA, CS, and UPSC, has made him a role model for tens of thousands of young people across India.
Early Life in Gangashahar, Bikaner — A Middle-Class Foundation That Shaped Everything
Mridul was born on August 30, 1989, in Gangashahar, a town in the Bikaner district of Rajasthan. His family was middle-class, which in this context means they weren’t poor, but they weren’t privileged either. There was no family connection to the civil services, no officer father or uncle to show him the ropes. What they did have was a culture of hard work and a belief that education was the most reliable path forward.
Growing up in Rajasthan meant Mridul saw firsthand the kinds of problems that affect rural communities in India. Crime in remote areas, weak law enforcement reach in district interiors, the everyday struggle of ordinary people navigating a system that often felt designed to ignore them. He wasn’t just a student watching these things from a distance. They were part of the landscape he grew up in. And something about that landscape made him want to change it rather than escape from it.
His father’s work meant the family occasionally moved between cities during his childhood, an experience that could have been unsettling but in Mridul’s case appeared to build adaptability. By the time he reached his teenage years, he had a goal that was concrete enough to motivate him and ambitious enough to require everything he had.
Education Journey — From Kendriya Vidyalaya to Three National Exam Victories
Mridul completed his primary schooling in Bikaner before shifting to Jaipur for his senior secondary education at Kendriya Vidyalaya, Jaipur. Kendriya Vidyalayas are central government schools known for solid academic grounding and a disciplined environment, and the Jaipur branch gave him exactly the foundation he needed for what came next.
After Class 12, he enrolled in Rajasthan University in Jaipur for a Bachelor of Commerce degree. During his B.Com years, most students are figuring out what to do after graduation. Mridul was already preparing for two of the hardest professional examinations in India simultaneously.
He cleared the Chartered Accountancy exam, which has a notoriously brutal multi-stage structure and a pass rate that hovers around single digits at the final level nationally. He also cleared the Company Secretary exam. Both in the same stretch of time. These aren’t paper qualifications you pick up on the side. They require years of dedicated study and multiple examination attempts for most candidates. Mridul cleared both while finishing his commerce degree.
He then pursued a Master’s degree in International Business from the International Business Management Institute (IBMI), giving him a postgraduate qualification that complemented his professional certifications with broader strategic and global business context.
By the time he sat for UPSC, he had three of India’s most demanding qualifications already in his pocket.
The Dream That Didn’t Come True — Why the NDA Failed and What It Built Instead
Before UPSC was ever on Mridul’s radar, he wanted to be an Army officer. He appeared for the National Defence Academy (NDA) examination not once but twice. Both attempts were unsuccessful.
Most articles mention this as a two-line footnote. But it’s worth pausing on it because it’s actually the most important thing that happened to him before he cleared UPSC. He didn’t drift into civil services because nothing else worked out. He aimed high, failed at a genuinely difficult target, had to recalibrate, and then aimed even higher. The NDA failure didn’t take his ambition away. It redirected it.
That pattern, of treating failure not as a stop sign but as a rerouting instruction, runs through everything that follows in his story. He failed NDA. He cleared CA and CS. He cleared UPSC twice. He tried to be an Army officer and became one of Rajasthan’s most celebrated police officers instead. Outcomes are rarely exactly what we plan. The question is what you do when the plan changes.
The Mumbai Chapter — CA Life, Corporate Work, and the Moment He Knew It Wasn’t Enough
After clearing the CA exam, Mridul moved to Mumbai and began working in the finance sector. On paper, it was the expected next step. A qualified chartered accountant in Mumbai has access to well-paying roles in banking, consulting, and corporate finance, sectors that pay generously and offer a comfortable, stable career trajectory.
He was good at the work. He had the credentials and the discipline it required. But something kept pulling at him from a direction that spreadsheets and financial statements couldn’t satisfy. The work felt technically impressive but personally incomplete. He had spent his childhood watching rural Rajasthan’s problems from up close, and sitting in a Mumbai office doing accounts meant those problems stayed exactly where they were, which was somewhere he was no longer.
He has been quoted as saying that he wanted a role with more real impact on society. That’s not a complicated statement. It’s also not a dramatic one. It’s the quiet recognition of someone who knows his skills are suited for something larger than the container currently holding them. He left the CA job and returned to the UPSC preparation path.
Coming to Delhi for UPSC — Old Rajendra Nagar, Long Hours, and Two Attempts
In late 2011, Mridul moved to Delhi to begin serious UPSC preparation. He settled in Old Rajendra Nagar in Central Delhi, the neighbourhood that has served as the unofficial residential campus for UPSC aspirants for decades. The area is packed with coaching institutes, study cafes, and small hostels full of people doing exactly what Mridul had come to do.
He studied twelve to thirteen hours a day, every day. Not occasionally. Not during the weeks before exams. Twelve to thirteen hours, consistently, day after day. He chose Commerce as his optional subject, a domain he already knew deeply from his CA and B.Com background, which gave him a head start on depth and saved him from the years of foundational learning that candidates choosing unfamiliar subjects have to invest.
For general studies and basics he used coaching, a practical decision given that GS requires breadth across history, geography, polity, economics, science, and current affairs, and coaching provides structured coverage. For his optional, he relied on self-study, where his existing knowledge meant he was going deeper rather than starting from zero.
His first serious UPSC attempt was CSE 2014, and he cleared it, but not for IPS. He was allotted the Indian Post and Telegraph Account and Finance (IPTAF) Service through the reserved list. For most candidates, clearing UPSC on the first attempt at any rank and receiving any central service would feel like success. Mridul declined the position.
He tried again.
CSE 2015. All India Rank 216. Indian Police Service. Rajasthan cadre.
He had his answer.
“Clearing CA Was Tougher Than UPSC” — His Famous Claim Explained
In a widely shared interview with Indian Masterminds, Mridul made a claim that stopped a lot of readers in their tracks. He said that cracking the CA exam was tougher than clearing UPSC. Coming from someone who succeeded at both, and cleared UPSC not once but twice, the statement is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing.
What he meant, in context, is about the nature of the two examinations. UPSC is undoubtedly vast, demanding, and competitive. But it has a structure. There’s a syllabus, there are standard papers, there are preparation strategies that work if applied consistently and intelligently. The CA exam, by contrast, at the intermediate and final levels, has failure rates that can exceed eighty percent. Its technical depth across accounting, tax law, auditing, and financial reporting means there are far fewer people in the country who even attempt it seriously, and a very small fraction who clear it.
His point wasn’t that UPSC is easy. It was that the CA exam, within its narrower domain, is arguably more technically brutal. And he cleared both.
For UPSC aspirants, the takeaway is practical: if you can survive the CA preparation process, you’ve already built the study discipline and mental endurance that UPSC demands. The subject matter is different. The capacity required is the same.
IPS Career Timeline — Every Posting and What He Did There
Mridul joined the IPS as Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) in Bhilwara in 2017, completing his foundational field training in a district that gave him exposure to the administrative, legal, and operational dimensions of policing. From there his career moved through a series of increasingly significant postings, each one building on the last.
He served as Circle Officer (CO) in Ganganagar Rural, where he managed law and order in a semi-urban rural belt with its own specific challenges around agricultural disputes, drug smuggling routes, and border proximity issues.
He was posted as SP in the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), Ajmer, where his work was focused on investigating and acting against corrupt officials across the state. ACB postings are considered high-stakes because the targets are not ordinary criminals but people with institutional power and political connections.
Then came the posting that made him famous nationally.
SP Dholpur, 2019–2020. The Chambal chapter.
After Dholpur, he was transferred to SP Karauli, a posting that generated one of the most politically charged episodes of his career. He then moved to DCP South, Jaipur in January 2022, managing the south zone of the capital city with its complex urban policing challenges. He served as SP Bharatpur from 2024 to early 2025, and is currently posted as SP Nagaur, a posting that he has already distinguished with significant anti-narcotics and law and order operations.
Operation Chambal — How He Arrested 57 Dacoits in 12 Months
The Chambal ravines of Rajasthan are among the most difficult terrains for law enforcement in India. The region’s landscape of deep gullies, dense scrub, and sudden drops means that visibility is often limited to fifty or a hundred metres. The dacoits who operate there know every ridge and escape route. They have weapons, local knowledge, and decades of institutional experience in evading police.
When Mridul Kachawa arrived as SP Dholpur in 2019, this was the environment he had to work in. He didn’t approach it with the traditional methods that had produced limited results for years. He used data. His team began analysing mobile phone data to map criminal movement patterns and identify the networks that connected dacoit gangs to each other and to their suppliers. They cross-referenced intelligence from informants with digital data to build a picture of the terrain that went beyond what any single informant or patrol could see.
The results were remarkable. In approximately twelve months, he and his team arrested fifty-seven armed dacoits from the Chambal ravines. Crime in the region dropped significantly. Areas that had been effectively no-go zones for ordinary civilians became safer. Local communities, who had lived under the shadow of dacoit violence for years, began to trust that the police would actually protect them rather than simply manage the appearance of order.
When his posting at Dholpur ended and he was transferred, something happened that doesn’t happen very often in Indian policing. The people of Dholpur came out in the streets to bid him farewell. They didn’t just wave from the footpath. They lifted him onto a horse, brought out a brass band, and sent him off in a procession that looked more like a wedding celebration than a government transfer notice. Police officers get transferred all the time in India. That kind of goodbye is rare enough to mean something.
The MLA vs IPS Controversy at Karauli — When the Public Defended an Officer
In October 2021, while Mridul was serving as SP Karauli, a political controversy erupted that put him in the middle of one of the most closely watched police-politics conflicts in Rajasthan that year. Reports emerged that a local MLA was pushing for his transfer from Karauli, with speculation that the officer’s no-nonsense approach to law enforcement was generating political discomfort.
The public reaction was extraordinary. People took to the streets of Karauli in support of Mridul Kachawa. Officers and political leaders across party lines came out in his defence. The incident trended on social media with thousands of people sharing their support for the IPS officer and their opposition to political interference in policing.
The episode illustrated something about his relationship with the communities he serves. When people trust an officer enough to publicly defend him against political pressure, it means he’s been doing his job in a way that people can see, feel, and remember. That kind of public capital isn’t built with press releases. It’s built post by post, case by case, operation by operation.
DGP Disk Award (2021) — What He Won It For
On December 3, 2021, Mridul Kachawa was awarded the DGP’s Disk Award by the Director General of Police of Rajasthan. This is one of the highest honours the state police administration can bestow on an officer, recognising outstanding operational contribution to law and order.
The award recognised his cumulative work across his Dholpur and Karauli postings. Most specifically, it acknowledged the Chambal dacoit operations and his systematic dismantling of criminal networks in the region through intelligence-led policing rather than brute-force deployments alone. It was formal institutional recognition from the top of the Rajasthan police hierarchy that what he had accomplished in those postings was genuinely exceptional.
Operation Neelkanth and the Nagaur Chapter — Fighting the New Crime
Dacoits in Chambal are the kind of crime story that generates national headlines. Drug trafficking is the kind of crime that destroys communities slowly and often invisibly. Since taking charge as SP Nagaur, Mridul has made anti-narcotics one of his central priorities.
Operation Neelkanth, launched under his leadership in Nagaur, has focused on identifying and dismantling the drug supply chains that feed addiction across the district. The operation has resulted in the seizure of drugs worth over five crore rupees and the dismantling of several supplier networks.
On January 25, 2026, the eve of Republic Day, his team seized ten thousand kilograms of ammonium nitrate in Nagaur. Ammonium nitrate is a common industrial chemical that is also a primary component in improvised explosive devices. A seizure of that scale, on the eve of a major national holiday, is the kind of operation that prevents harm that the public may never see or fully appreciate. The threat is neutralised before anyone realises it existed.
The results across 2025 in Nagaur speak clearly. Crime rates dropped by 10.4 percent, including measurable reductions in murders and robberies. These numbers aren’t just statistics. They represent real people who were not victimised, disputes that were resolved before they escalated, and communities that went about their lives with a degree of security they might not have had otherwise.
Mridul Kachawa’s UPSC Preparation Strategy — Step by Step
Because his story is so widely shared among UPSC aspirants, his preparation approach has become one of the most commonly searched topics connected to his name. Here’s the honest breakdown, drawn from his own interviews.
Study hours: He studied twelve to thirteen hours daily during his preparation period. This wasn’t occasional peak effort. It was the baseline.
Optional subject: He chose Commerce as his optional, which aligned with his CA and B.Com background. The advantage of choosing a subject you already know deeply is that you’re going for mastery rather than familiarity, and in UPSC optionals, depth matters enormously.
Self-study vs coaching: He used coaching for General Studies, where breadth of coverage and current affairs management benefit from a structured course. For his optional, he relied entirely on self-study. This is a practical split that he recommends to aspirants based on their own existing knowledge base.
First attempt outcome: He cleared CSE 2014 and received IPTAF. He rejected this and attempted again. This is an important data point. Not every first-attempt clearance gives you the service you want. His willingness to give up a confirmed central service position and try again is part of what makes his story genuinely instructive.
Physical fitness: He maintains a fitness routine of thirty to sixty minutes of exercise daily and emphasises that a healthy body directly supports sustained cognitive performance. During long preparation stretches, neglecting physical health compounds fatigue and reduces the quality of study hours.
His advice to aspirants: “Be patient and be consistent.” It’s simple, and it’s exactly right. UPSC preparation is not a sprint. The candidates who succeed are almost never the cleverest people in the room. They’re the ones who keep showing up when everyone else has rationalised stopping.
Social Media and the New Kind of Policing
Something that distinguishes Mridul Kachawa from most IPS officers of his generation is his deliberate and effective use of social media as a tool for community connection and transparency in policing.
His Instagram account at @mridulkachawaips has 243,000 followers. His Twitter account @ips_mridul has 24,500 followers. His Facebook page has over 90,000 followers. These numbers are not incidental. They represent a carefully cultivated public presence built through consistent posting, engagement with public concerns, and a tone that is human and accessible rather than bureaucratic and distant.
He uses these platforms to share both operational updates and broader reflections on policing, governance, and public service. His pinned tweet, republishing a piece by former DGP UP OP Singh on the “silent victories of everyday policing,” captures his philosophy: the work that matters most is often the work that nobody notices.
For young people who grew up in communities where police were feared rather than trusted, seeing an IPS officer engage openly on social media, respond to questions, and speak about the human dimensions of the job is a genuinely different experience. It doesn’t replace good operational policing, but it builds the public trust that makes good operational policing more effective.
Personal Life — Wife Kanika Singh, Hobbies, and What He Does Off Duty
Mridul Kachawa is married to Kanika Singh, who has been described consistently in accounts of his life as a supportive partner throughout his career. He hasn’t made her a public figure, which is consistent with his broader approach to keeping his personal life appropriately private despite his public professional presence.
His most well-known personal passion is horse riding. He’s regularly photographed on horseback, and it’s clear this isn’t just a photo opportunity. Horse riding at a serious level requires patience, physical control, and a specific kind of calm attentiveness that maps well onto the qualities that make someone an effective officer in high-stakes situations. The Dholpur farewell on horseback wasn’t just symbolically appropriate. It was genuinely his territory.
He maintains a fitness routine of thirty to sixty minutes of daily exercise and has spoken about balanced nutrition as a component of sustained performance. For someone managing the cognitive and physical demands of senior IPS postings, this isn’t vanity. It’s operational.
He has also been featured in the November 2025 issue of Smart Governance magazine, reflecting the growing recognition of his career and management approach beyond just operational policing.
Mridul Kachawa IPS Net Worth 2025–2026
Reliable figures for IPS officer net worth depend on their salary grade and length of service. As a 2015-batch IPS officer currently at the SP level, Mridul Kachawa draws a salary in the Indian Pay Scale Grade Pay structure applicable to IPS officers at his seniority. His estimated net worth as of 2026 is placed at approximately ten crore rupees by multiple sources, though this figure is an estimate rather than a verified declaration.
What’s worth noting is that unlike business figures or entertainers, an IPS officer’s wealth trajectory is largely a function of government pay scales, allowances, and any personal investments made outside of service. It’s not the kind of wealth that generates headlines, but it reflects the financial position of a senior government servant who has built a career through public service rather than private enterprise.
What Makes Mridul Kachawa Different From Other IPS Officers?
It’s a fair question. India has thousands of IPS officers. What earns one of them the nickname Rajasthan’s Singham and a public farewell on horseback?
A few things stand out when you look at his career carefully.
He uses technology intelligently. The mobile data analysis approach in Chambal wasn’t standard operating procedure in 2019. He applied it because it worked, not because it was tradition.
He builds public trust. The people who cried when he left Dholpur and took to the streets when he faced a transfer threat in Karauli weren’t doing so out of courtesy. They were doing it because they had experienced the difference his presence made to their daily safety.
He doesn’t position himself as bigger than the system. His social media presence is human and reflective, not self-promotional. He shares content about policing philosophy, not about his own achievements.
He’s a rare combination of academic excellence and operational grit. CA, CS, UPSC AIR 216, and fifty-seven Chambal dacoits in twelve months. Most officers bring one of these to the table. He brought all of them.
And he treats failure as data rather than identity. Army dream failed. He became an IPS officer. First UPSC attempt produced IPTAF. He cleared it again for IPS. This pattern of persistent recalibration is what separates his story from the many bright people who fall at a single obstacle and stay there.
Frequently Asked Questions — Mridul Kachawa IPS Biography
Who is Mridul Kachawa and why is he famous? Mridul Kachawa is a 2015-batch IPS officer of the Rajasthan cadre, currently serving as SP Nagaur. He’s famous for arresting fifty-seven dacoits in the Chambal ravines in twelve months during his Dholpur posting, for clearing CA, CS, and UPSC back-to-back, and for becoming a role model for UPSC aspirants across India.
What is Mridul Kachawa’s UPSC rank? He secured All India Rank 216 in the Civil Services Examination 2015 and was allotted the Indian Police Service, Rajasthan cadre. He had also cleared CSE 2014 with an IPTAF allotment, which he declined to attempt again.
What is Mridul Kachawa’s current posting in 2025–2026? As of early 2026, he is posted as Superintendent of Police (SP), Nagaur, Rajasthan. He has served at this posting since mid-2025.
How did Mridul Kachawa catch 57 dacoits in Chambal? During his tenure as SP Dholpur from 2019 to 2020, he used mobile data analysis and intelligence-led policing to map criminal movement patterns in the Chambal ravines. By identifying dacoit networks digitally and combining that with on-ground operations, his team arrested fifty-seven dacoits in approximately twelve months.
Is it true that Mridul Kachawa said clearing CA is harder than UPSC? Yes. In an interview with Indian Masterminds, he stated that clearing the CA exam was tougher than cracking UPSC, citing the extremely low pass rates and technical depth of the CA final examination. Given that he cleared both, his perspective is based on direct experience rather than speculation.
What is Mridul Kachawa’s UPSC preparation strategy? He studied twelve to thirteen hours daily, chose Commerce as his optional (aligned with his CA background), used coaching for General Studies and self-study for his optional, maintained daily physical fitness, and practiced consistency over intensity bursts. His advice to aspirants: “Be patient and be consistent.”
Why did people protest when Mridul Kachawa was transferred from Karauli? In October 2021, reports that a local MLA was pushing for his transfer from Karauli triggered a public show of support. People took to the streets defending him, and officers and leaders across party lines came out in his favour. It reflected the deep public trust he had built through his policing work in the district.
What is Operation Neelkanth and what did it achieve? Operation Neelkanth is an anti-narcotics drive launched under Mridul Kachawa’s leadership as SP Nagaur. It has resulted in seizures of drugs worth over five crore rupees and contributed to a 10.4 percent reduction in overall crime in Nagaur district in 2025.
What is Mridul Kachawa’s net worth? His estimated net worth as of 2026 is approximately ten crore rupees, primarily reflecting his IPS salary, allowances, and personal assets accumulated over a decade of government service.
Where can I follow Mridul Kachawa on social media? He’s active on Instagram at @mridulkachawaips (243K followers), on Twitter/X at @ips_mridul (24.5K followers), and on Facebook at Mridul Kachawa IPS (90K+ followers).