Kiran Bedi - Biography

Kiran Bedi is a 1972 batch retired IPS officer, social worker, good tennis player, and politician, who served as the 24^th Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry between 2016 to 2021. She retired from the post of Director-General, Bureau of Police Research and Development in 2007 after long 35 years of service. She became the first woman to join Indian Police Service as an officer, after passing the civil services exam conducted by UPSC. 

Family and Education

Kiran Bedi was born as the second daughter of Prakash Lal Peshawaria and Prem Lata on 9^th June 1949 in Amritsar, Punjab. Her father was one of the coparceners in his father’s textile business, in which her father used to get an allowance for his work and the whole family was run by her grandfather. Her family was migrants from Peshawar and settled in Amritsar during India-Pakistan Partition in 1947, so they had the title Peshawaria. She has three siblings- Shashi, Reeta, and Anu. Prakash Lal didn’t have any son at that period when a male child was preferred a lot in place of the girl child. He had a vision that he will make his daughters so successful that they will settle in four different parts of the world and this happened too, all four of them are settled in four parts- her three siblings are in the UK, USA, and Canada and Kiran Bedi served the Indian soil.

Despite having objections from her grandfather, her father enrolled all his daughters in Sacred Heart Convent School, run by Christians because it was the best school in that region, which was around 15 km away from their home. Kiran Bedi started her schooling in 1954 in this school. In class 9 she changed her school and enrolled in Cambridge college because in Sacred Heart school “household” was taught in place of science, so she moved from there to study science and completed her matriculation. She also joined NCC during her school days. She completed her graduation bachelor of Arts in English honours in 1968 from Government College for Women, Amritsar. In 1968, she also won NCC Cadet Officer Award. After that, she completed her master’s in Political science from Punjab University in 1972. She started her career as a lecturer at Khalsa college of women in Amritsar. Along with that she appeared for the civil services exam and got selected in 1972 for Indian Police Services under the Union Territory cadre. Even after passing the Civil services exam, she completed her Bachelor’s degree in Law from Delhi University in 1988 and later her Doctorate from IIT-Delhi in Social sciences in 1993.

Kiran Bedi was very close to her parents. She always remembers two lessons for life given by her father-

1. “Life is on an incline, either you go up or u will come down”
2. “100 things happen in our life, out of these 90 of them is our creation for which oneself is responsible and other 10 are unavoidable, so do good deeds and enjoy that 90 and don’t worry about the other 10 which we can’t control”.

These were those lessons that helped her right from her college days, in civil services preparation, in her policing service, and even in her political career phase.

Personal Life

Kiran Bedi met her husband Brij Bedi, who was also a tennis player, at the Tennis court where both of them used to practice. It was the time when Kiran was preparing for her Asian tennis Championship, Brij used to give his practice time for her preparation. Brij was always supportive of her. He was with her when she passed her civil services exam. Then they decided to get married before the start of training in 1972.

After a few years of service, Kiran gave birth to her daughter Saina Bedi in 1975. Due to postings in different cities, the couple cannot live together for a long time, Brij stayed in Amritsar as he had factories there, while Kiran gave her service to the nation in various cities of her cadre.

Tennis Career

Dr. Bedi’s love for tennis was inherited from her father. He was a very good tennis player and passionate about tennis which seeded his interest in tennis in her daughter. She started playing tennis at the age of 9.

She played her first big tournament in 1964 in National Junior Lawn Tennis Tournament in Delhi. She won this trophy after two years of successive defeats. She won various other indoor tennis events like the All-India Intervarsity tennis title in 1968, Northern India Lawn Tennis Championship in 1970, Asian Lawn Tennis Championship in 1972, and All India Interstate Women’s Lawn Tennis Championship in 1975, and a Gold medal in National Sports Festival for Women in 1976.

Her Police Journey and Postings

Her Police journey started on 16 July 1972 at the National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie (now LBSNAA), being the only woman in the batch of 80 candidates. After completing the foundation course from the academy, she moved to Mount Abu for 9-months of Police training.

When she initiated her journey as a Police officer, she had a different perspective and approach to policing. Her vision of policing was that Policing is ‘Power to correct’, ‘Power to prevent’, and ‘Power to detect’ which was different from the earlier approach of only ‘Power to detect’ and ‘Power to punish’ because she believes that the role of Police is more than just catching criminals and punishing them, it is making efforts to stop the happening of crime.

Delhi

IPS Kiran Bedi was firstly posted in the very opulent area which had the Parliament building, Prime minister’s residence, Rashtrapati Bhawan, and different foreign embassies in the Chanakyapuri division in 1975. In this area, she faced pity crimes and a large number of political conflicts because this area was the country’s center for politics and leaders. One such incident happened in the 1978 winter when a conflict broke out between two Sikh groups- Nirankari and Akali in Delhi. During the protest, a large group of Akali members started throwing bricks and ran toward the police forces with swords in response to that Officer Bedi gave the order to charge cane and disperse the mob. She handled that serious situation very well for which she was awarded the Presidents’ Police Medal for Gallantry in 1980.

Soon after that Sikh incident, Dr. Bedi was transferred to the West Delhi area facing a high level of crime. There was also a shortage of manpower to control the crime so she came up with the idea of recruiting volunteers from the public. She appointed six such volunteers with a one-armed policeman for patrolling the area. She set up a complaint box named “Beat Box” in each ward for complaints and feedback from the public. With all her efforts the crime rate in the area came down and policing of the area also improved a lot. She also did good work in increasing the police manpower in that area.

After that, she was appointed as the DCP(Traffic) in October 1981. It was the time of the 1982 Asian Games which New Delhi was hosting. She was assigned the duty to maintain the traffic difficulties during the preparation and happening of the event. She started spot fines for vehicles instead of challan and introduced tow trucks for irregularly parked vehicles and issued Parking tickets to them. One such incident made her a sensation when on her order, a sub-inspector issued a Parking ticket to a vehicle of the Prime Minister’s Office on 5^th august 1982 for improper parking.

According to her, it was the first and the last time a Parking Ticket was issued for the vehicle of the Prime minister of India, due to her courageous act people nicknamed her “Crane Bedi”. She was announced to be given Asian Jyoti award for her Excellent work as DCP (Traffic), but she refused the award saying that it was the effort of the whole traffic department for that outstanding work by Traffic police during the Asian Games.

After Asian Games, she was transferred to Goa. Her transfer to Goa has rumours of being a revenge act for issuing a parking ticket to the close persons of the Prime minister of that time. She tried a lot to revert this transfer order and keep her posting in Delhi only because her 7-year-old daughter was suffering from nephrotic syndrome and she was very ill at the time for that Dr. Bedi requested her seniors to let her stay in Delhi for the sake of her daughter’s health, but no one approved her proposal. Finally, she moved to Goa.

Goa Posting

In Goa, Dr. Bedi did various memorable works, which people talk about that even today. In 1983 Dr. Bedi made many politicians of Goa angry when she opened the Zuari bridge which was completed but not opened to the public for many years in the wait for the Prime Minister to inaugurate the Bridge. During her posting in November 1983, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meet was organized in Goa which was very well handled by her. Another landmark work by her in Goa was the inclusion of NCC cadets for traffic control on VIP routes.

After Commonwealth meet, the condition of her daughter worsened, and it was very important for her to stay with her daughter. She applied for leave to her senior but the Goa government didn’t approve her leave. But she decided to go to her daughter in Delhi even without leave. This made Goa Government very angry, in response to that Goa CM declared her absent without leave.

Delhi Posting 2.0

She faced repercussions for that unapproved leave, she was not given any posting for 6 months. After this long leave and the efforts of some higher police officials, she was posted as Deputy Commandant of RPF in New Delhi. After that, she also served as Deputy Director in the Department of Industrial Development. Then served a few years as DCP of North Delhi.

Lawyer’s Controversy

In 1988, she faced a more than a month-long strike by lawyers of Delhi. The incident started when a person was arrested by Delhi Police for charges of theft and trespassing, it was a normal thing, but things became abnormal when it was discovered that the thief was a practicing lawyer of Tees Hazari Court. In response to that, the lawyers of the court started protesting saying that it was not the way for arresting a lawyer. Soon this protest spread across the country. During the protest, two violent incidents took place. The first one was on 21^st January when lawyers were protesting outside the office of Kiran Bedi, the Office of DCP of North Delhi. It is said that lawyers present there threatened and tore the uniform of policemen, and vandalized the office complex. So, the police reverted and lathi-charged them in which 18 lawyers got injured.

Another violent incident broke out on 17^th February 1988, when a mob of around 1000 people entered Tees Hazari Court and attacked lawyers and damaged the property of the court. Lawyers held DCP Kiran Bedi for the mob attack, saying that she didn’t stop the mob and let them create such a nuisance- that the attack was instigated by her.

Later, the court set up a 2-judge Committee of Justice DP Wadhwa and Justice NN Goswami, known as the Wadhwa Commission to enquire about the matter and after some time, the bench found that DCP Kiran Bedi was not guilty of the whole incident.

Mizoram Posting

After being pleaded non-guilty by the Wadhwa commission, she was transferred to Mizoram in April 1990, which was considered one of the hard postings among Police personnel, and it was also very far away from metro cities.

Here she faced the problem of alcoholism of local liquor named Zu, and even the policemen were also alcohol addicts. Then, she started an Alcohol Rehab center to get rid of alcoholism.

It was Mizoram where she completed her major part of the research work for her Doctorate program. Mizoram was also the place where she indulged in another controversy of facilitating her daughter Saina, applying for admission to Lady Hardinge Medical College under the Mizo reservation category, without being a Mizo. Due to all these, her daughter had to leave that seat lastly. Then she left Mizoram because of this seat controversy without officially leaving the post.

Memorable Tihar Jail tenure

The Kiran Bedi is remembered for her works or reforms in Prison. After 8 months of coming back to Delhi, she was posted as Inspector General (Delhi prison) in May 1993.

The Tihar jail of Delhi had the strength of 9000 prisoners, various posts were vacant in the jail, and there was a budget just to fulfill the basic requirements of the jail. So, she decided to improve the ill condition of the jail. Here are the some of the reforms brought up by Kiran Bedi: -

1. She separated the barracks of dangerous criminals and other soft criminals
2. She allowed getting vocational training to the prisoners for which she facilitated to set the centers of IGNOU and National Open School in the jail itself
3. She started education inside the jail, with community support, where everything was donated right from books, stationery, etc
4. In 1994, she organized Health Day for check-ups for the prisoners
5. Meditation sessions were organized in the prison for prisoners and policemen.
6. She installed ‘Petition Box’ as a feedback box for prisoners

These all initiatives by her made her prison tenure a milestone in her career.

Social Work

Navjyoti Delhi Police Foundation was set up by her. Later renamed Navjyoti India Foundation in 2007, which works for providing Rehab and treatment facilities to alcohol and drug addicts.

In 1994 India Vision Foundation was founded by her police reforms, prison reforms, women, and community upliftment.

She was also featured in a TV show named Aap Ki Kachehri, to solve conflicts of domestic issues on Star Plus.

She joined the Anti-Corruption movement led by Anna Hazare to demand the passing Jan Lokpal Bill.

Lastly, she also contested the Delhi Assembly election as a Chief Minister candidate from BJP, but could not make it. After that, she was made LG of Puducherry.

Conclusion

In the light of her adventurous and courageous life, it can be concluded that she proved herself a patriotic, corruption-free, duty-focused Police officer in parallel to being a good wife and a great mother. This was Kiran Bedi for you.