The rise and fall of Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun

When Bo Xilai , the new party secretary in Chongqing , was looking for someone to head the municipality's police force and crack down on its rampant gangsters, his eyes turned to 52-year-old Wang Lijun , a police chief who had made a name for himself as a crime fighter in the northeastern province of Liaoning .

That was in 2008. Within two years of his promotion, and aided by Bo's powerful political support, Wang had smashed dozens of organised-crime syndicates and sent their alleged "triad bosses" to prison along with their friends in the police force.

Wang probably came to Bo's attention some time in 2003, when he was the secretary in the public security department of the Communist Party in Jinzhou City , in Liaoning, of which Bo had been appointed governor in 2001. Bo was appointed party secretary of Chongqing, a megacity of 33 million people in 2007.

Wang's official résumé describes him as being born in Arxan City , in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and having "Mongolian nationality". He joined the police force in 1983, and the Communist Party in 1987. He is listed as a graduate of the Chinese People's Public Security University and the Beijing Municipality's Public Security Management Cadres College, and joined the Public Security Department of Liaoning's Tiefa City in 1992.

After his apparent success against organised crime in Chongqing on Bo's behalf, Wang was fêted as a gangbuster by the common people, and took centre stage in public life. This celebrity came despite accusations by lawyers that he extracted confessions through torture and sacrificed due process in the pursuit of the so-called triad groups.

As early as 2009, speculation was rife in Chongqing that some triad bosses had secretly offered a bounty of 6 million yuan (HK$7.3 million) for Wang's assassination. In addition, a local police source said, several police officers secretly harboured grudges against Wang for pushing them to work seven-day weeks from dawn till dusk.

In an apparent attempt to protect himself, the source said, Wang lived on the 15th floor of the Public Security Bureau's main building in Chongqing, and never used a designated police vehicle.