By S A Ishaqui
Hyderabad,Oct. 29: The Andhra Pradesh High Court asked the state government to spell out what steps it took to improve representation of women in the police department.
At present, women police constitute only 2.6 per cent of the police force in AP. A division bench comprising Chief Justice Anil R. Dave and Justice C.V. Nagarjuna Reddy, while admitting a petition filed by one Mr Srinivas Madhav, a practising advocate, directed the principal secretary of the home department to provide more details on the number of women and men they had taken in each recruitment drive. It also sought the men and women ratio in the police department.
When Mr K. Janakirama Reddy, counsel for the home department, told the bench that they had classified certain categories of jobs in the police department and were taking women for those categories, the bench wondered whether gender would make any difference in the civil police wing.
The bench asked him: “If you feel women are not suited for night patrolling, driving and other tasks, better define them.”
The bench observed that they do not see any problem in women officers handling law and order situations and asked the home department, director-general of police and the chairman of the State Level Police Recruitment Board to file their counters.
Mr Srinivas Madhav told the court that it was a matter of concern that out of the total 65,826 civil police in the state, only 1,744 are women and there are only 27 women police stations in the state. He said it was nothing but tokenism which will not yield the desired results.
He added that in Tamil Nadu which has a women police force of 8,810 in its 72,208 civil police strength, there were 196 women police stations. While Tamil Nadu reported just 7,811 crimes against women in 2007, the crime rate added up to 11.8 per cent and for the same period, the crime rate in the state was 30.3 per cent.
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