14 Women IPS Officers Who Are An Inspiration For Every Woman Aspiring To Don That Uniform

IPS officer is not just a name but a challenging responsibility of whole country. Every year millions of people try to crack the Indian Civil Service exam and most of them are men, women are in minority but they still manage to stand high and shine.

If you ever ask any IPS officer what to do to become an IAS/IPS officer they will say you first need a reason and try to understand your motive. When you look for reasons you will get the answers. These top IPS women officers will make you understand the value of Indian Police Service, motivate and inspire you to achieve something good in life. They stick to their words and always stay committed to their duty with full determination.

Women alone can handle all duties whether it’s house or duty for the nation. You just need guts to stand and fight against the crime. Here are some of the fearless women IPS officer who are fighting the crime and have shined like a star.

1. Kiran Bedi

Kiran Bedi is a retired IPS officer and a social activist. She also served as Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry from 28 May 2016 to 16 February 2021. She is the first woman who joined IPS in 1972 and for 35 years she remained in service. In 2007 she retired as a Director General, Bureau of Police Research and Department.

She was posted as Inspector General to the Delhi Prison. She has done a remarkable work at Tihar Jail by introducing several reforms through which she gained worldwide fame.

She was also awarded Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1994. Kiran became the first Indian woman who was appointed as a Police Advisor to Secretary-General of the United Nations in 2003, in Peace Keeping Operations Department.

She runs the Indian Vision Foundation and also she has written several books.

2. Sanjukta Parashar

Sanjukta Parashar is the brave IPS officer of batch 2006. This name becomes a nightmare for Bodo Assam militants. She has already taken down 6 militants and in 15 months she has arrested more than 64. Besides, her amazing work she is the first IPS woman who belongs to Assam. In civil service exam she scored 85th and chose IPS duty over administrative work.

As Police Superintendent of Sonitpur District, she leads a team of CRPF Jawans with AK-47 in terror-infested region. She also received various death threats from National Democratic Fronts but this didn’t affect her at all. She is one of the most feared police officer.

Last information we got to know about her work is that in the case of the Bhopal-Ujjain train blast she is heading a probe to solve the case.

3. Merin Joseph

Merin Joseph became the youngest IPS officer of Kerala cadre at the age of 25. From childhood, she wanted to become an IAS officer but destiny has different plans. After her graduation she cracked the UPSC Civil Service Exam in 2012 with 188th rank.

To lead the Indian Delegates for The Y20 Summit she got selected from Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel National Police Academy. After a media publication included her in the list of beautiful women officers. Merin slammed the sexist article and the patriarchal mindset of the society that objectifies women like this.

Recently, she did a great job by going all the way to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to grab a rape accused criminal who had been on the run for 2 years. Merin does a lot of social welfare work too, she is an inspiration for all.

4. Subhashini Sankaran

Subhashini Sankaran is the first women IPS officer of independent India to be put in charge of the chief minister’s security. She proves herself and breaks various stereotypes mainly in roles that leave a scope of zero error.

Subhashini cleared the UPSC Mains examination with rank 243. On December 23, 2014 militant of splinters group of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland killed 30 tribals in Sonitpur District. Subashini and her team reached within 20 minutes and sensed the serious situation.

She is also responsible for busting a rhino-poaching ring that was operating nearby Kaziranga national park during her posting in Assam.

5. Aparajita Rai

Aparajita Rai is the first female IPS officer from Sikkim. She appeared for the UPSC Civil service exam in 2011 and 2012 and cleared it both time. She is the first Sikkim person who holds such a high rank in the Civil Services Examination. During her training period Aparajita received many awards.

Her story is full of motivation to do something and make a change. She was born into an educated family, Aparajita lost her father at a tender age of eight. Her father was a divisional forest officer. So, she had to support her mother from her family. During this period she realized the insensitive attitude of government servants towards people. Then she decided to work hard and bring a change.

Aparajita’s major achievements involve Shri Umesh Chandra Trophy for Field Combat, The 55th Batch of Senior Course Officers Trophy for Best Turn Out, 1958 Batch IPS Officers’ Trophy for the best Lady Outdoor Probationer and West Bengal Govt Trophy for Bengali. She says, “Anyone who comes to me should not face the same harassment or agony which people normally encounter with government offices.”

6. Meera Borwankar

Meera Borwankar is the women to head Mumbai’s Crime Branch Department in 2001 in long history of 150 year. A tough officer who has solved various difficult cases including Abu Salem’s extradition, Jalgaon sex scandal (include various politicians), Iqbal Mirchi and many more.

In 1981, Meera became an IPS officer of the Maharashtra Cadre where she served as Deputy Commissioner of Police in Mumbai. From 1993-95 she was posted in the CID branch. She worked with CBI in Mumbai and DIG of the Anti-Corruption Bureau of New Delhi.

Meera is the inspiration behind the movie of Mardaani and witnessed the hanging of Yakub Memon in 2015, who was convicted of 1993 Mumbai serial booming. She also received many medals including the President’s medal in 1997 along with Police Medal and Director General’s Insignia. She believes that women are so much of capable in all terms and gives advice to women to become independent, fearless, and not self-doubting to follow their dreams.

7. Sangeeta Kalia

Sangeeta Kalia is a brave officer who stood up to stop misusing of power by ministers. She was inspired to become an IPS officer by actor Kavita Chaudhary, who played the role of an IPS officer in the TV series Udaan.

After completing her master’s in Economics, Sangeeta worked as an assistant professor and gave UPSC exam three times to achieve her dream and become a real-life hero. On the third attempt, she cleared the exam.

Her father was a painter in the Fatehabad police and supported her a lot. In 2010, she joined the Haryana Police as an IPS officer. At that time her father was retiring and it was a very proud moment for him to see her daughter like this.

In 2015, Sangeeta became famous and gained a lot of attention when she was serving her duty as Police Superintendent in Fatehabad. She had an argument with the Health Minister of Haryana Anil Vij because the minister told Sangeeta to leave the meeting and she refused his order to do so. Due to this, she got transferred to a different area by the Health Minister. She gained huge support for standing up against the unfair misuse of the minister’s power.

She also arrested a gang of robbers who were stealing money from ATMs. A lot of complaints were there against them and it was difficult to catch them. But with good planning and execution, the culprits finally got arrested by Sangeeta Kalia.

8. Dr. Ruveda Salam

Ruveda Salam fulfilled her father’s dream and made history by becoming the first IPS officer from Kashmir. In her adolescence age, her father always said that he wanted her daughter to become an IPS officer. After completing MBBS from Srinagar, she cleared her Civil Services Examination twice and on her second attempt, she achieved the IPS cadre.

Ruveda received her training from Hyderabad and was posted in Tamil Nadu as Assistant Police Commissioner in Chennai.

Currently, she is an Assistant Commissioner Income Tax officer in Jammu after she chose the Revenue Service. Ruveda also gives many motivational speeches to young girls. She motivated and encouraged them to give IAS exam in Jammu and Kashmir.

9. Soumya Sambasivan

Soumya Sambasivan is Shimla’s first IPS officer. A 2010 batch IPS officer who started a serious investigation against the drug mafia and successfully held most of them behind the bars. Her name was nominated for the President’s police medal.

Soumya is the first female superintendent of Police who is appointed in Shimla. For two years, she was also posted in the Sirmaur district. She became famous and was loved by people due to her disciplined and strict nature. Saumya also solved six murder cases at the time period when she was posted in Sirmaur. Saumya is popular for training women for self-protection and how to use pepper spray properly in self-defense.

Most of the time, she is in the spotlight for her fast and strong actions against criminals, she is a strong police officer.

10. Sonia Narang

Sonia Narang is the 2002 batch IPS officer. In 1999 she graduated from Punjab University and was a gold medalist in Sociology. Later she was promoted to the rank of Deputy Inspector General of Police in the Crime Investigation Department. Sonia was inspired by her father, A.N. Narang who retired as a Deputy Superintendent of Police. Sonia had only one aim, and that was to wear the khaki. She also said in an interview with Indian Express that

“I never thought of something else. It was civil services only right from high school.”

She is also known as the iron-willed lady because of her zero tolerance for those who make mistakes and cause trouble. She became a public figure when she slapped the MLA during a wild protest between Congress and BJP in 2006. Actually, she had to restore a lathi charge to make things in control but the MLA of BJP, Renukacharyaa refused to move from he was standing. Then she slapped the MLA and also sent him behind the bars.

In 2013, when the CM made a statement that Sonia was involved in Rs 16,000 crore mining scam. She immediately passed a statement in the media that she had never been assigned to areas where illegal mining takes place, then how come money comes into her pocket?

Aside from kicking out criminals she also exposed the racket which was functioning within the Lokayukta office. She became the second female officer in the long history of Karnataka to become the Deputy Commissioner and the one to handle the South Division of Bangalore. She also got promoted to the rank of Deputy Inspector of Police in the Crime Investigation Department.

She was appointed as superintendent of Police, National Investigation Agency for a period of four years. Currently, she is appointed as the Additional Director in the Enforcement Directorate.

11. Kanchan Chaudhary Bhattacharya

Kanchan was the first woman to become Director General of Police and retired on 31 October 2007 from the service. She was also the second IPS officer in the country after Kiran Bedi and the first woman to become DGP of Uttarakhand and also the first woman IPS officer of Uttar Pradesh.

She has won many medals in her journey including President’s medals in 1997 for distinguished services and meritorious services in 1989, the Rajiv Gandhi award in 2004 for great work, All-rounder performance, and an excellent woman achiever.

Kanchan was selected to represent India in Cancun, Mexico during the Interpol meeting in 2004. She hosted the 2nd Women in Police Conference and got praised by the President of India for her excellent performance. She is best known for her work as the chairperson of the All Indian Women in Police, Police of Uttarakhand.

She brought up the issue of recruitment, training, and continuation of police women in India at the DGPs Annual Conference and also to the training heads of the whole country on behalf of the Bureau of Police Research and development.

Kanchan Chaudhary died at the age of 72 after a prolonged illness in the year 2019.

12. Vimal Mehra

Vimal Mehra is the first Special Commissioner Police, the only woman who created history by getting the important position of Special Commissioner Police for the first time in the history of Delhi Police.

She is best known as the second female Director General of Delhi Tihar Jail after Kiran Bedi. She made a big change by introducing foreign language courses for women in prison. She introduced the Women’s Helpline (1091) as the head of the Crime against Women Cell. She also started self-defense training programs for women and this is one of her biggest achievements.

For the first time in Delhi, Vimal dealt with the battalion at the time of the Anti-Sikh riots. There she introduced the training course of self-defense which was run by the police.

13. Archana Ramasundaram

Archana is a retired IPS officer and was a member of the Tamil Nadu Police. She served for 37 years as an IPS officer and in 2018 she retired. On 3rd February 2016, she took charge as the Director General, of SSB, and was the first woman police officer in India to lead a central paramilitary force.

Archana is from the 1980 batch, a postgraduate in Economics from the University of Rajasthan. There she also worked as a lecturer and after she got appointed to IPS and got Tamil Nadu cadre. She worked as SP of the Prohibition Enforcement Wing and took strict actions against a big number of bootleggers and prohibition offenders. Later she worked as SP of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption in Chennai.

She was awarded many medals – The police medal for Meritorious Services in August of 1995 and the President’s Police Medal for distinguished service in 2005.

In 1999, she got selected for Central government as a deputation and was posted in the Central Bureau of Investigation in New Delhi as DIG.

14. Dr. B. Sandhya

B. Sandhya is the Additional Director General of Kerala Police in India. She got training in HR management from the Wollongong University of Australia in the year 1998 and also passed PGDBA in 1999 from Pondicherry University.

She got involved in an investigation of sexual harassment allegations which was against former Kerala Public Works minister P.J. Joseph in 2006. She also successfully implemented the Janamaithri Suraksha Project in 2009 which is a successful model of Community Policing.

In 2010, IAWP which is based in the USA awarded the International Scholarship of Distinction to Sandhya. The Kerala police awarded Sandhya the President’s Police Medal for Meritorious Service in 2006.

Neelakoduveliyude Kavalkkari (her novel) won the award of Edasseri in 2007. Also won Gopalakrishnan Kolazhi Award, Abudabi Sakthi Award, in 2013 its Kunjunni Puraskaram Award.