They were once on the margins of police investigations, confined to handling cases of crimes against women. Today, Delhi Police’s women sleuths are leading from the front: busting drug syndicates, cracking down on human trafficking, and tackling financial fraud and cybercrime. Though the Delhi Police does not tick all boxes of gender equality, the growing presence of women in investigative roles reflects institutional progress and personal resilience. In their years in the force, these women have proved their mettle — whether it is questioning suspects, analysing evidence, or leading field operations — and are looking to inspire a new generation to pursue careers in law enforcement. The Indian Express speaks to six women investigators across different departments on why they joined the force and what keeps them going. Anita Wadhwa (45) Head Constable, Crime Branch, Anti-Narcotics Task Force (ANTF) It was September 2024. A Crime Branch team, including Anita, were heading to a familiar drug den — Outer Delhi’s Sultanpuri. She had been with the premier anti-narcotics unit for two years then. “A particular community controls the drug business in Sultanpuri. A woman, Alka, was one of the most prominent names. We had been trying to get something on her for months. And now we had,” says Anita, as she recalls what in policing terms is called a ‘sensational’ case. The team reached Sultanpuri, and Anita and her team entered a three-floor house where Alka lived. And then, all hell broke loose. “I was sent by the team to handcuff Alka. I hadn’t even touched her when a stream of people — residents — poured out from the rooms. Some more came in from the main gate. There were about 60-80 people,” Anita says. The team had anticipated this. Her instructions were clear — hold Alka and run towards the PCR van, without looking back. And that’s what she did. “Bricks were thrown at me. One hit my head. My whole team was surrounded. one of the head constables was being beaten up. I managed to get into the PCR van. Local police had come in, and they rescued my team members. And then, someone hit the back window of our vehicle with a brick,” Anita says. Shards from the window fell on the seat, with many tiny pieces penetrating her back and waist. “For the next 10 days, I couldn’t sleep on my back or my left side. But it was nothing compared to what happened to my team members. One of them almost died,” she adds. Anita describes herself as someone who has been well-trained for these situations, with her extensive experience in police stations located in the criminal underbelly of Delhi. Bespectacled in thin, pink-rimmed glasses, Anita is 5 feet 5 inches. Dressed in a blue floral salwar kameez, she could easily be mistaken for an ordinary citizen — until she slips on a red half-jacket emblazoned with Crime Branch, Delhi Police. Born in Rajasthan’s Sri Ganganagar in 1980, she was the middle child among three children. The family moved to Delhi when she was two years old. “My father, Om Prakash Wadhwa, initially started a tours and travels business, which suffered losses. Then he started a small tailoring business from our home in Moti Nagar. It was a two-room accommodation. My elder brother, younger sister and I shared a room,” she recalls. Anita had a strict upbringing. Her father made no distinction between boys and girls when it came to discipline. “If we were to be home at 7 pm, and it was 7.01 pm, we would wish we’d never gone out.,” she recalls. Her mother, Krishna, was silent, she says. “She didn’t speak much in front of my father. But she would pacify him when he grew angry.” A young Anita craved independence. In the second year of her graduation at Delhi University’s Janki Devi College in 1999, she did a stenography course and joined a private firm. “But I wanted more. So in 2001, I sat for the Delhi Police constable exam,” she says. In 2002, the results came out. Anita, 22, was selected. Her family was happy. “They were apprehensive, but who doesn’t want a government job for their child?” she quips. Her first posting was at North Delhi’s Maurice Nagar police station. In 2003, Anita married Navneet Tyagi; he now runs a battery rickshaw rental business. “We lived in the same area, and our families were well acquainted. We used to talk often. One day, he asked my father for my hand in marriage. Never asked me, though,” she chuckles. The couple has two sons, aged 21 and 18 years. In 2009, Anita says, there were vacancies for the post of head constable. “But I couldn’t apply. I was pregnant with my second child. But I was patient, and vacancies opened up again in 2013,” she recalls. Anita cleared the test and became a head constable. In 2022, she got her dream transfer to the Crime Branch. She now awaits another promotion — to Assistant Sub-Inspector. “It’s finally on the horizon,” she says. Sukanya (38) Head Constable, Crime Branch, Anti-Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU) It was January 2025. Sukanya was at her Rohini office, tracking a case — much like she had been doing for the past 12 years with the AHTU — of two missing girls. The girls, 12 and 14, both sisters, were untraceable since October 2024. “After months of surveillance, we got a lead that the girls were taken to Jalgaon. Inspector Virender, who has been my boss since I joined, asked me and Head Constable Anuj to head to Maharashtra.,” says Sukanya, who goes by her first name. On January 6, she and Anuj reached Jalgaon, and arrested the accused — a man in his late 20s, who had lured the sisters through Instagram. “It's hard when you go to another state. The locals are hostile. You don’t know the language. You try to act tough where you can. But sometimes it’s pure luck,” says Sukanya. Anuj and Virender Kumar have been by Sukanya’s side since her early days as a constable at the AHTU. Initially confined to paperwork, she was nudged onto the field by Virender. “He always encouraged me. Eventually, I started getting more opportunities to lead investigations,” she says. She recounts one of her assignments in Bihar, where she was surrounded by a couple of residents in an open field. “My team was far off. The accused’s family was not letting me touch him. They would take him and start heading towards their village. I had to follow him in the wet mud, trying not to fall, and drag him back. For almost 30 minutes, I. was fending off the crowd,” she says. This kind of grit, says Sukanya, was instilled in her early in life. Hailing from Ladpur village in Haryana’s Jhajjhar, she was the third among four children. Her father, Phool Kanwar, was a farmer. “My father used to go to the akhada (wrestling pit) every day, and would take me with him. He trained me in wrestling for years; I represented my school and college in multiple state-level competitions,” says Sukanya. Her 5-foot-7-inch frame still carries the presence of an athlete. Dressed in an off-white salwar kameez with pink floral patterns, paired with black sneakers, she ties her black hair neatly in a bun. Growing up, she says, the most prominent figure of authority in her village was the police. “When they arrived in their jeeps, I used to marvel at the attention they got from all the villagers. Everyone wanted to be seen with the kotwal, and let people know that they knew them. I wanted that,” she says. So, when Sukanya completed her BA from Maharshi Dayanand University in Rohtak, she told her father she wanted to join the police. “He didn’t ask me a single question. He just listened. And from the next day, he trained me at the akhada for my physical test. He taught me how to ride an Enfield. He prepared me in the best way he could.” In 2010, Sukanya cleared the Delhi Police constable exam and was posted at the Crime Branch. The next year, she married Harish Chakara, a constable in the force. “My husband and I shifted to Kanjhawala. I became a mother in 2012,” she says. December 2015 brought Sukanya one of her first big assignments. “We were assigned a case from the DCP office — it was about a racket based in Uttar Pradesh, where girls from economically poor backgrounds were being ‘sold’ to older men,” says Sukanya. She and her team started tracking phone numbers that were active around the areas from where some of these girls were picked up. And soon, they got a lead. “I went with the raiding party to Muzaffarnagar. When we entered the isolated building, we found a row of underage girls. about 15 of them. They looked pale. I was asked to take them out one by one. The way they held my hand. that’s the feeling I work for,” says Sukanya, her eyes gleaming. Sitting on an old couch inside the Delhi Police Headquarters on Ashoka Road, Sukanya says her colleagues have moved elsewhere. “Anuj is now in Outer North Delhi. Inspector Virendra is now the SHO at IGI Airport. My new team members are warm, but it will take time to get to know them.” She says she has taken on more desk work now. “My son is 13. I have to be there for him. But I still get calls in the middle of the night from families who thank me for returning their daughter or son.” Anju Dahiya (38) Inspector, Economic Offences Wing (EOW) Anju sits behind a hulking wooden desk, with neatly stacked files and an old HP computer, in a rectangular cabin. She is dressed in a crisp white shirt and black pleated pants. Her first-floor office, in the EOW police station in Central Delhi’s Mandir Marg, resembles a lawyer’s chamber. With the setup and her attire, one could easily mistake Anju for a lawyer. She could have been one, too. “As far as I can remember, my only dream was to become a lawyer,” says the Inspector. After she finished her BSc Honours from DU’s Kirori Mal College, she sat for the judicial services examination. “I failed by 2 marks. I had to get a job now,” says Anju. She found one at a call centre. But her mother wanted her to get a government job. In 2009, she sat for the Delhi Police constable exam and cleared it in one go. She joined the force in 2010. Her first posting was at the Shahbad Dairy police station, where she handled the rape of a young child in 2014. But she could see a change taking place when it came to women in the force. “Women head constables were either assigned rape or molestation cases or roped in as helping hands in cases where the wife or sister of an accused needed to be contained,” says Anju. “But from my batch, about 85 women head constables were recruited. That was a huge number back then.” Anju rose up the ranks. She was promoted to the rank of Inspector in 2022, when she joined the Cyber police station in West Delhi. She later served as the ATO (Anti-Terrorist Operations) at Tilak Nagar and Punjabi Bagh police stations. Alongside conducting raids in multiple states, often leading teams and laying traps for dreaded suspects on the run, she and her equally busy husband, an inspector at the Punjabi Bagh police station, were raising a family. “I have two children; we both take turns to dress them up for school, drop and pick them up. My husband is a better cook than me. He makes this dish, mixing potato and paneer — that’s what my children love the most,” she chuckles. In May 2025, Anju was transferred again — to the EOW this time. After more than 16 years in the force, most of them centred around dusty ground work in her khakis, Anju was in for a sleek policing role. “It was very different. Everyone in formals, crunching numbers, discussing company law. There were no daily calls of fights, thefts and murders,” she says. Amidst cases involving money running into crores, she looks for the ones where common people were conned. Currently, she is deep in a case involving a group of people who were duped of more than Rs 1 crore in a land-grabbing scheme. “I think this is the closest I will come to being a lawyer,” she smiles. Narender Kaur Dogra (48) Assistant-Sub Inspector, South Western Range, Crime Branch Born in a family of six sisters, Narender always wanted to be part of a job where her strong-willed nature and boldness could be used to their full potential. A national-level volleyball and kho-kho player, she was always up for a challenge. It was in 1996, when she was studying Political Science at DU’s Daulat Ram College, that she and two of her friends decided to fill out the form to join the force. Her friends didn’t make it. Narender, meanwhile, was selected. She dropped out of college and joined the Delhi Police that year. In 1997, she married Deep Kumar Dogra. She had known him since her teens. They had met him during volleyball training and fell in love. After she made it to the police force, she says returning to her ‘mohalla’ (area) was a moment of pride. “Khandhe chaude ho gaye the parivaar walon ke (My family beamed with pride),” she says. Her work, however, didn’t stop her from finishing college. “After giving birth to my two sons, I pursued my graduation through the Open University in 2003,” she says. Sitting on a sofa, a notebook in front of her, Narender looks animated when she talks. She is dressed in a matching violet long top and trousers, over which she wears a red sleeveless jacket — it has the words ‘Crime Branch Delhi Police’ emblazoned. She wears spectacles and sports two thick rings and several bracelets. The first few cases she dealt with were of rape and molestation. She recalls one of them — a 40-year-old woman who had alleged her partner raped her. “I had spoken to her, and the facts of the case were different. it wasn’t how she had stated it. I presented the facts in court, but I was pulled up. That day, I realised that the police should only act according to the law,” she says. Her husband has been a huge support. “Police work is hectic. cases, investigations, calls take up most of our time. During Diwali or any festival, Deep handles the household and the rituals,” Narender says. Deep is in the transport business; he sometimes arranges a vehicle for her when she goes on outstation raids. “It saves us the trouble of arranging transport and makes the operation smoother,” she says. The conversation returns to work. She recalls an experience that stayed with her during the search for a missing girl in Rajasthan. “At the spot, we encountered a water body on one side and dense forest on the other. We had traced the girl there — she had been missing from Punjabi Bagh since June 2023. It took us around three weeks to find her.” “But when we spotted her, she took off running and disappeared into the forest.” Narender and the team followed in hot pursuit. “It started to get dark, but we knew we couldn’t stop. We kept going and, at last, we found her,” she says. Shabnam Saifi (37) Sub-Inspector, Cyber Unit, Crime Branch The desire to be a woman of significance and carve her own identity is what drew Shabnam to the uniform. “In our culture, like some others, women don’t have much of a say in household or societal matters. I knew I wanted to be different, I wanted to feel acknowledged and respected — that’s why I joined the force,” she says. While pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in English from a DU college, Shabnam was also running a tuition centre. One of her students happened to be a constable who had enrolled to improve his English. Fluent in the language, Shabnam realised that she, too, had the potential to join the police force. “Kuch aisa karo ke log yaad rakhein (Do something that the world remembers),” she says. “I have always been a firm believer in this.” Shabman is fair and of medium build. She wears her hair pulled back and sports a small nosepin. Before joining the Delhi Police, she worked as a head constable in the Indo-Tibetan Border Police for two years. Her family was not enthused, she says. “Then I appeared for the Delhi Police SI exam and cleared it with merit. Ever since, there has been no looking back,” she says. Her childhood friend was the one she confided in about her goals. Months before joining the force, the two got married. He was from another community. The couple chose to move forward with their relationship despite the absence of their immediate families at the wedding. Today, they are parents to an eight-year-old daughter. “It might seem hunky-dory now, but it was a struggle,” she recalls. “Both families took time to come around. Even now, people make insensitive comments about communal issues in front of my husband — but he doesn’t hesitate to call them out.” Growing up, Shabnam wanted to be a journalist. “During the Kargil war, women journalists were reporting from the ground. I used to see them and think, ‘Wow!’ I even enrolled in a journalism school, but the fees were too high, so I couldn’t continue,” she says. Shabnam pursued a BA and MA in English and multiple courses on women-related issues. She now wants to pursue a PhD. Talking about her work, she says there are several cases that she considers feathers in her cap. One such case involved a Kashmiri woman. She had married a man in 2020. But he allegedly sexually assaulted one of her daughters from her first marriage and later kidnapped her. Shabnam was part of the team that nabbed him in Dehradun, four years later. “The accused hasn’t got bail till now, and I’m proud of that. It was a long, emotionally draining case,” she says. Currently, she is focusing on digital arrest cases, eager to learn and keep up with evolving technology. Hanshul Gupta (33) Sub-Inspector, Cyber Police Station, North Delhi Hanshul joined the force in 2019 and has been working at the North Delhi Cyber Police Station since its inauguration in December 2021. Dressed smartly in the Delhi Police uniform, the sub-inspector has an open face and a warm smile. For her, cyber investigations are tedious but exciting. “It involves a lot of work — writing emails to platforms, scanning call records, IP addresses, and accounts. The most challenging part is that cyber fraud methods are evolving every single day,” Hanshul says. But her background in BTech and her previous job as a software engineer have proven to be a great asset in her current role. What excites her most is learning new investigative techniques and managing the forensic lab, which she is in charge of. She loves numbers and can spend hours scanning through data. On average, she meets three to four people who have been duped each day. While some are keen to file a report, others simply want a quick resolution. In cases involving women, many just want their images taken down and prefer not to register a formal complaint. She says most cases involving women follow a similar pattern — regardless of their background, income, or social status. Citing an example, she explains: “A man connects with you on social media, starts video calling, but never turns on his own camera. He convinces you to switch on yours, and eventually pressures you to strip during the call or send intimate photos later. A woman or young girl should simply refuse. Once that line is crossed, the fraud begins, followed by threats and blackmail. The cycle only becomes more vicious.” A digital fraud she was investigating last November is still stuck in her mind. It was a customs scam; the suspect was a Nigerian national. She says she pursued every possible lead — conducting raids at multiple locations in Mumbai and elsewhere — but he remained untraceable. “I am aware of the boxes I ticked and the efforts I made. Mentally, I am satisfied that I did whatever I could,” she adds. Hanshul is married. Her husband works in the IT sector and lives in Rajasthan, while she lives in Delhi. He makes weekend trips to visit her. “I also visit him, but he usually comes to Delhi because of the nature of my job,” she says. In her free time, she loves watching Chinese and K-dramas. Currently, she is hooked to ‘Wonderland of Love’.
