There have been innumerable depictions of fearless, brave and honest cops in Bollywood but most of them were male. May be they hadn’t heard of the 2002-batch IPS officer of Karnataka cadre, Ms. Sonia Narang. She is one of those rare officers who didn’t budge in the face of political pressure, said no even to the chief minister and even made the Lokayukta resign. She has been making one headline after another and not for wrong reasons.
Her first posting was in Gulbarga in 2004. Since then, she has taken down numerous criminals and faced corrupt officials strongly and fearlessly. In 2006, Ms. Narang was appointed as the Superintendent of Police in Davangere. The city was under a violent protest at the time. Activists from both, the ruling party, BJP, and the opposition party, Congress, were engaged in a major clash.
Ms. Narang and her team imposed prohibitory orders but both Congress and BJP workers disregarded it and started gathering at a place. As the situation started getting out of hands, Ms. Narang ordered her team to use batons to disperse the crowd. But BJP legislator, Mr Renukacharya, refused to move from the place and continued the protest. Even after several warnings, when he refused to move budge, Ms. Narang slapped him and put behind bars.
This stirred a huge controversy. But Ms. Narang held her head high, for she knew she did not do anything wrong. Had she not used mild force, things would have gone out of hand and curfew would have to be imposed. She was highly admired by the public for her courage. The MLA did his best to get her transferred from the area but remained unsuccessful.
Tiff with the Chief Minister
July 2013 proved to be a fateful month in the life of Ms. Narang when the Chief Minister of Karnataka, Mr Siddaramaiah, allegedly stated in the legislative assembly that the IPS officer, who was then the Commandant of KSRP first battalion, was facing charges of helping in illegal mining.
Ms. Narang not only refuted the statement strongly but also maintained that she had never worked in the areas where illegal mining was being done. She also welcomed a thorough probe into the matter. The chief minister had sternly declared that he will get the matter investigated. But, nothing has been heard on that ever since.
The Lokayukta scam
In May 2015 she received a complaint from an executive engineer that a person called ‘Krishna Rao’ was demanding a bribe of Rs. 1 crore. The call had been made from the premises of Lokayukta headquarters. Ms. Narang decided to look into the matter and sent a report seeing probe into the serious charges of in-house corruption.
Later, it emerged that it was only a tip of the iceberg and several government officials including IAS and IPS officers paid off a group of operators, including Lokayukta Justice Y Bhaskar Rao’s son, in Lokayukta office when they were threatened with raids. She ultimately got the accused arrested and Justice Rao was made to resign from the position.
Policing in her genes
Ms. Narang was born and brought up in Chandigarh. She belongs to a Police family. Her father, Mr. A.N. Narang retired as Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP). Ms. Narang has always been a bright student and excelled in academics in her school as well as college. In class 12th, she was the North zone topper and received a gold medal in BA (Honors).
She acquired the Punjab University Merit Scholarship and the National scholarship from HRD ministry for three years. She has even completed her Master’s degree from sociology through distance learning.
Civil service was a dream
Since she was a little girl, she dreamt of getting into the Civil Service and serve the nation. She never paid heed to any other career choice as she knew that her heart and mind lies in working for her nation. “I had never thought of anything else. It was only civil services right from high school. After graduating, I started preparing for the UPSC exam. Even then, I used to read a lot of magazines on competitive exams whenever I found time,” she says.
After two unsuccessful attempts, she finally cleared the UPSC exam in 2002. She also bagged the honor of being the first woman Superintendent of Police of Belgaum district and also the second woman cop in the history of Karnataka to be the Deputy Commissioner (South Division) of Bangalore.
Married a fellow IPS
Ms. Narang met her life partner, Ganesh Kumar, a Bihar cadre police officer, while she was undergoing training at LBSNAA, Mussoorie. They have a son together named Shaurya. Due to her hectic schedule, she is not able to spend much time with her son, which she regrets. “What pains me the most is that I wanted to see my son grow, but I can’t do that.” She is a religious person and loves reading spiritual books and listening to old music.
