R K Raghavan was on Thursday unanimously elected as the President of the Triplicane Cultural Academy, a 66-year-old organisation based in Chennai, supported by Kasturi & Sons Ltd, the publishers of The Hindu group of newspapers. The Academy runs a library of 40,000 books and conducts lectures and cultural programmes.

Raghavan was elected at the Academy's annual general meeting held here, to the position that fell vacant after the demise of G Narayanaswamy, chartered accountant.

Background

Raghavan Krishnaswami Raghavan is a former diplomat whose latest position was that of India's High Commissioner to Cypress. Earlier, he was a police officer and Director of Central Bureau of Investigation between 1999 and 2001. He is better known for his service as the Head of the Special Investigations Team (SIT) that went into the 2002 Gujarat riots case. He is also remembered for his investigations into other high profile cases such as the murder of Priyadarshini Mattoo and South Africa cricket match fixing of 2000.

Raghavan takes over as the President of the Academy, which is today more a knowledge-sharing platform for the intelligentsia, at a time when it is trying to expand its activities so as to bring in more cultural content in its operations. In the recent past, intellectuals like Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Justice Chelameswar have spoken at the Academy.

Accepting the position, Raghavan said that he was honored to take on the role and promised to further strengthen the organisation.

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