Vinoy Kumar Choubey Recognition — President's Police Medal and Career Milestones

Principal Honour

2023

President’s Police Medal for Distinguished Service

Announced ahead of the 77th Independence Day, in August 2023, while he was serving as Commissioner of Police, Pimpri-Chinchwad.

The President’s Police Medal for Distinguished Service is conferred by the President of India and is the senior of the two service medals in the Indian police honours system, awarded for a record of distinguished service over a career rather than for a single act.

In the Maharashtra list announced that year, the medal for distinguished service was reported for three officers: Additional Director General of Police Pravin Salunkhe; Police Commissioner Vinay Kumar Choubey; and Special Inspector General of Police, Amravati, Jayant Naiknavare. The same announcement covered 33 Maharashtra personnel awarded the Police Medal for Gallantry and 40 the Police Medal for Meritorious Service.

Source: Prasar Bharati — News on AIR (newsonair.gov.in), 14 August 2023. Also reported by Pune Pulse and NDTV, August 2023.

Catalogue

2023

President’s Police Medal for Distinguished Service

President of India · Ministry of Home Affairs
Announced ahead of Independence Day, August 2023

Context. Awarded while serving as Commissioner of Police, Pimpri-Chinchwad, roughly eight months into that command and some twenty-eight years into service.

Description. The senior service medal in the Indian police honours system, recognising a career record of distinguished service. One of three distinguished-service awards reported for Maharashtra in that year’s announcement.

Source: Prasar Bharati, News on AIR, 14 August 2023.

2024

First Commissioner of Police to complete a full two-year tenure at Pimpri-Chinchwad

Pimpri-Chinchwad Police Commissionerate
Milestone reached December 2024

Context. The commissionerate was constituted on 15 August 2018. Choubey, who took charge on 14 December 2022, was its fifth Commissioner of Police.

Description. Reported as a first in the commissionerate’s history — a matter of institutional continuity rather than an award. Tenure stability is consequential in a command of this kind, because the structural work that dominates the record here takes longer than a short posting allows.

Sources: Punekar News and Indian Masterminds, 17 December 2024; Lokmat, December 2024.

2026

First use of MCOCA against a cyber-fraud network by the commissionerate

Pimpri-Chinchwad Police Commissionerate
Reported April 2026

Context. A complaint registered on 20 February 2026 concerning the defrauding of a retired senior citizen of ₹11.13 crore.

Description. The Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act was invoked against a nine-member cyber fraud gang — the first occasion on which the commissionerate applied that law to habitual cyber criminals. Nine arrests were made across five cities and ₹2.65 crore was returned from frozen accounts. A procedural first for the commissionerate rather than a personal honour.

Source: The Free Press Journal, 22 April 2026.

A Note on This Page

What is not listed, and why

An officer of nearly three decades’ standing will in the ordinary course have received commendations, appreciation letters and departmental awards. Those have not been reproduced here, because this website publishes only what can be traced to a source that a reader could check.

Three specific exclusions are worth stating plainly. No award has been listed on the strength of a position held. No honour has been inferred from a photograph. And no departmental commendation has been included on the assumption that it must exist.

A short list that is entirely verifiable is worth more than a long one that is not.

Two of the three items above are, strictly speaking, milestones rather than honours — a first full tenure and a first use of a statute. They are included because they are documented, dated and attributable, and because they say something about the command that a medal citation does not. They are labelled for what they are.

If further verified recognitions come to light, they belong here, described in the same terms.