Women of Influence: A compilation of Ten Extraordinary IAS Careers by Rajni Sekhri Sibal, An Excerpt

Women of Influence: A compilation of Ten Extraordinary IAS Careers by Rajni Sekhri Sibal is a compilation of the work of a few women who have walked that extra mile and made a difference despite major pressures in governance. An excerpt from the chapter Death in Police Custody

Traditionally, Mahendragarh had had a Subdivional Magistrate (SDM)—a young entrant to the Indian Administrative Service. Most SDMs were from outside the state. They had no political links and were duly forgotten after they were posted. The summer Nikita joined Mahendragarh as the new SDM, the town was reeling under exceptionally high temperatures. In her early twenties, she was an outsider to the cadre and the first civil servant in her family. On receiving her posting orders, she had no idea where she was headed. She bought the map of Haryana to locate her destination before the journey. The late 1980s were not quite the years of Google Baba!

The ‘SDM House’ was quaint and had a massive compound. The place looked old and a little spooky. It was situated outside the small town, flanked by mustard fields. The nearest building was a dingy-looking police station a few kilometres down the road.

The gate to the SDM House was opened by a rather grim looking man with one eye made of glass. ‘I am Hanuman, the chowkidar. I have worked for eight SDMs before you,’ he said.

Neelam, Nikita’s mother, had come along with her to settle her daughter in. She took a look at the place and thought, ‘My little daughter will find this a difficult place to work in.’

‘Do you think you will be safe here, Nikki? You do have other options, you know . . . Are you sure this is what you want?’ Neelam asked, wishing Nikita had accepted the Rhodes Scholarship she had been offered the year she had cleared the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination.

Nikita, on the other hand, was very clear in her mind about what she wanted to do in life—quaint towns in the middle of nowhere, and scary old houses, notwithstanding. She was excited about her first job and was raring to go.

A month later, Nikita returned from a visit to Bassai, the furthest village of the subdivision, in her rickety official jeep. The scorching summer sun was unrelenting. The outside temperatures had touched 45º C at noon. By the time she reached home, she had a terrible headache and was running a fever. Her temperature rose to a 102º C around 9: 00 p.m. She decided to take a Paracetamol and call it a day.

Late that night Nikita was rudely woken up by the sharp sound of the telephone bell. By the time she climbed out of bed and walked up to the landline in the corridor, the phone had stopped ringing. Those were the days of stationary phones and trunk calls. She looked at her watch. It was 11.30 p.m.

‘Who could that be? And at this time of the night?’ she wondered.

The telephone system in Mahendragarh, like most things, was a decade behind the rest of the world. There were 100-odd phones in the town serviced by a manual telephone exchange. Any number you wanted could not be dialled directly. You had to pick up the handset and request the telephone operator at the other end to connect you to it. This also meant that the sweet voice that answered the phone and said, ‘Number please?’ knew exactly who had called whom and for how long they had spoken.

‘The operator would know who called me,’ Nikita mused, as she picked up the phone to find out who had tried to call her at 11.30 p.m.

‘Hello, SDM Madam. Who can I connect you to?’ said the voice at the other end.

‘My phone rang a few minutes ago. Who was it, please?’

‘That was the SHO from the thana, madam. Do you want me to call him for you?’

Nikita looked at her watch again. It was almost 11.45 p.m.

‘Why did the Station House Officer of the local police station try calling me in the middle of the night?’ she thought.

Mahendra Yadav, the SHO of the police station near her house, had accompanied the Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) at Mahendragarh when he had come to call on her formally. Sarban Singh, the rather rotund DSP, looked straightforward and a little laid-back to her. Mahendra Yadav, on the other hand, was smarter than his senior—maybe too smart. There was a wily air about the tall and self-assured SHO.

Excerpted with permission from Women of Influence: A compilation of Ten Extraordinary IAS Careers by Rajni Sekhri Sibal published by Penguin Random House India.

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