A SportsWomen Turned Into Super Cop, Story Of Kiran Bedi

Kiran Bedi is an Indian politician belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). She is currently the Lieutenant Governor of the union territory of Puducherry. Bedi took to politics after retiring from Indian Police Service (IPS) in 2007. She was the first Indian woman to join the officer’s ranks of IPS in 1972. During her stint in the IPS, she had served in the position of the Director General at the Bureau of Police Research and Development. Bedi is also noted for her role as a social activist. The winner of the Magsaysay Award in 1994, Kiran Bedi has been one of the active members of the Anna Hazare-led civil society that launched a movement for the enactment of a strong anti-corruption law, the Jan Lokpal Bill. She formally joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on 15 January, 2015 and was selected as the party's chief ministerial candidate for the 2015 Delhi Assembly elections.

Kiran Bedi was born in Amritsar, Punjab on June 9, 1949 to Prakash Lal Peshawaria and Prem Lata Peshawaria. She obtained her Bachelor of Arts in English (Hons) from Amritsar’s Government College for Women in 1968. She completed her Masters in Political Science in 1970 and was a topper in her class. In 1972, Kiran Bedi married Brij Bedi and has a daughter with him.

She earned her degree in law from the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi in 1998 while in service as the Director General of Police. Subsequently, she went on to obtain a doctorate from the Department of Social Science at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi in 1993.

Kiran Bedi did not start her career as a cop, but as a lecturer of Political Science at the Khalsa College for Women in Amritsar in 1970. After two years of her teaching career, she cleared the Civil Services examination and became an IPS officer. This made her the first woman in India to join the services.