More women reporting crimes against them is welcome change

When I joined in 1981, I was the only woman in my batch. I was made to feel unwelcome by my batchmates in the National Police Academy.

- Meeran Chadha Borwankar, an IPS officer of the 1981 batch

Meeran Chadha Borwankar, an IPS officer of the 1981 batch, was the first woman to become a district police chief in Maharashtra, and then a police commissioner as well. Having retired as Director General of the Bureau of Police Research and Development, and Director General of the National Crime Records Bureau, Borwankar wrote two books about her time in the police services-Leaves of Life (2017) and Madam Commissioner: The Extraordinary Life of an Indian Police Chief (2023). At the second edition of the Crime Literature Festival of India, Borwankar talks with Garima Sadhwani about her journey. Edited excerpts:

Tell us about the challenges you faced as a woman IPS officer.

Every day the message sent to me by their actions was that this is no place for a woman.

Even when I joined the Maharashtra cadre, I saw a certain discomfort in my colleagues. It wasn't resentment; it was the fact that they didn't know what to do with a woman in the force. Slowly, when they saw my work with the community and within the police force, they started to realise that my identity was not of a woman officer, it was simply that of an officer. That's when they started taking me seriously.