Status: Not Approved
Over the past 2 years, 591 Maoists surrendered, alongside a few encounters, during her stint as SIB chief. Senior officers said Sumathi and her team played a key role in planning and ground coordination, including during the Tuesday surrender of Devji alias Thippiri Tirupati and 3 others. She also worked as DCP North Zone in Hyderabad and began anti-Maoist work in 2015 while serving as Medak SP.
Colleagues said this sharpened her intelligence and operational skills. As DIG, Women Safety Wing and CID, she also backed CybHER (“Safe for Her”), which the Women Safety Wing said was ideated by senior leadership, including DIG Sumathi Badugula. Hyderabad: Inspector General of Police Badugula Sumathi, the IPS officer heading the Special Intelligence Branch, an anti-Naxal agency in Telangana police, emerged as a key player in the top leadership’s surrender, which police described as the closing phase of the Maoist movement in the state. Sumathi’s policing career spans intelligence, anti-terror work, and field postings. She was instrumental in the interrogation of Indian Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Toiba, and ISIS cadres. She started as a Deputy Superintendent of Police, rose through the ranks, and was later inducted into the IPS. Beyond intelligence work, Sumathi’s career also included women’s safety and victim-support initiatives. In Medak district, she was credited with conceptualising and implementing a multi-disciplinary distress intervention model for cases where police or court outcomes did not address underlying trauma. During the recent Medaram Jatara , she played a key role in transforming the Telangana police through the TGQuest project.
She earlier worked as Superintendent of Police, Counter-Intelligence Cell (Intelligence Department) in undivided Andhra Pradesh, where she was involved in operations targeting IM-linked modules and left-wing extremist networks. Director General of Police B Shivadhar Reddy, speaking on Tuesday during the surrender of top Maoist leaders, including Tippiri Tirupati alias Devji, publicly credited Sumathi and her team.