Before moving on to the National Disaster Response Force and Civil Defence, he was additional Director in CBI from August 2005 supervising all the three: Economic Offences, Anti-Corruption and Special Crime, 2001 to January, Divisions of CBI besides overseeing investigations related to coordination with Interpol and leading investigating agency like FBI and Scotland Yard. He also served in CBI as Superintendent of Police from 1982 to 1984.

Abu Salem Extradition: Complete Coverage

When asked if he would be meeting Salem, Shankar said, "He is not a hero or something that I would go to take his autograph. He is a criminal and I would like to meet him as many times as is necessary for the purpose of investigations," he said.

"My top priority would be to go after criminals like Dawood Ibrahim and extradite them to India," he said.

He did not feel that the government of India had accepted humiliating terms to extradite Salem to India. " Portugal has different laws than what we have. They have waived death penalty. So to get Salem to India we had to accept their conditions. There is nothing wrong in that," he said, defending the decision of the government.

He complimented his predecessor U S Misra for setting up high standards for organisation. "I would like to emulate his achievements," he said. Though the CBI director has a fixed tenure of two years, Vijay Shankar is likely to carry on the job for another eight months beyond the fixed term before he retires unless he is given a different assignment.

Talking to rediff.com Shankar said, since the speaker of the Lok Sabha is looking into the matter of members caught taking money in sting operation, the CBI would not look into the matter suo-motu and wait for a specific directive from the government.

He served in the Border Security Force as DIG and IG from 1991 to 1997.  While serving in BSF as DIG and IG, Kashmir Frontier, he handled terrorism and militancy which was at its peak in the valley in the early 1990s.