Sreelatha M

If you wish to get some time to talk to Ajeetha Begum Sulthan, you might as well chase shadows. Kerala’s Inspector General of police (Crime Branch) Ajeetha Begum has virtually no time even to breathe as she moves from one task to another in a day that seems to have no end.

The Crime Branch head is among the senior-most police officers in the Kerala cadre of the Indian Police Service and the first Muslim woman IPS officer from Tamil Nadu.

You wait and wait for days to get her on the call, as her office also waits for her to come back from various assignments. She may be at a sports event, a cultural event, or investigating sexual harassment in the film industry.

She is also leading investigations on trafficking, drug inflow into the state and other very sensitive issues that affect the social fibre of the state.

She has always maintained that her work on women and children is very close to her heart.

She rose through the ranks of the police hierarchy in Kerala, drawing laurels wherever she was posted.

Ajeetha Begum Sulthan

She is in fact a celebrity of sorts along with her IPS husband also Inspector General of police and have been feted by almost all media outlets from time to time…when Ajeetha busted a trafficking racket with the arrest of 44 accused in quick succession, when they both were posted at the same time in Kollam district as city and rural SP, or when they proved themselves to be the fittest cop duo after completing the Ironman triathlon a few years ago or when the couple returned from US after a finishing a training under a Fulbright scholarship to wear their uniforms again.

After days of waiting, suddenly one evening the phone rings and it is her. Hello I’m Ajeetha. Tell me.

And suddenly you feel like a kid, not because it is her but despite it being her…a top cop, the IG of the police crime branch on the other side of the phone.

She is just half your age. But why are we scared of cops, despite having interviewed many cops, visited many police stations for various stories…a cop is a cop. You are never prepared to talk to a cop. Or it could be that you have always wanted to talk to a cop, but they seem tough, dangerous (to criminals), and toughness and aggression are not welcoming.

Ajeetha’s voice suddenly cools you down as it seems to hold warmth, the simplicity of a mother of two, the kindness and down-to-earthiness of a little girl who grew up in a simple household in some faraway place in Tamil Nadu…

And soon your questions and her answers begin to flow in rapid succession, the fear is gone, and the cop is humanised.

How did she get into the skin of a tough cop? Where do you get your confidence and firmness from? Was she always like that?

``I was not always confident, as you know, I come from a simple family in Coimbatore…” she begins. It grew in her over the years, she says, touching briefly on her family and her entry into the services.

Born to illiterate parents and a family that married girls as soon as they were 18, Ajeetha’s turn came as soon as her sister was married off in the first year of college.

Ajeetha Begum Sulthan wityh women

But she had been involved in student politics and was already being encouraged by her teachers to study further. And she took the advice seriously. When her turn came, her parents began to push her to get married like her sister. But she resisted and finally won. Now her father, like many fathers, wanted her to try for civil services and become an IAS officer. Despite being clueless about what that entailed, she prepared and got selected for IPS instead.

So, from that background where she saw her father run from pillar to post to get some government benefit and fight demands for bribes, she was not born with the cop-like confidence. She inherited the pain and anger of the victims of red tape and bureaucratic apathy.

But while confidence was imbued by her ``over the years,” as she puts it modestly, she says she has not changed at all as a person.

I maintain the same simplicity I possessed before I joined the IPS, she says. ``People close to me know that I haven’t changed at all, she says.

"After all, it's another government job but one which comes with a lot of respect, power and authority,’’ she says.

What took some time was acceptance as a woman officer.

Ajeetha Begum with Husband Sahteesh Bino

The first challenge was faced in her first posting in the Jammu-Kashmir cadre in 2008. Here, her first challenge was not gender but language. ``I struggled because I could not understand Dogri or Hindi, and all the files were in Urdu. ‘’ But she says it was a good cadre and the people were very simple and humble.  She moved to the Kerala cadre in 2019, and she felt her life change dramatically. The best thing was that she could understand everything now. She could even read. She says she had to clear a mandatory language exam before she joined the Kerala cadre.

Talking of gender disparity, she recalls her posting as SP in Thrissur. “The floor was full of senior officers. I was addressing a conference on crime. All legislators were to come. But since it was a new SP and a woman too, the turnout was less.’’

But these things do not last. People look at the post and the responsibility it carries, she says.

She recalls the words of her mentor at the training centre: ``My mentor used to say that even at 25 you have to be right. You can't afford to go wrong. If you go wrong once or twice, then you are branded forever.’’ She says she always kept the advice close to her heart.

"This is the only job where a huge responsibility is kept on the shoulders of very young people,’’ she adds.

She says that in Kerala, promotions for men or women are the same. She got an additional SP posting as soon as she came to Kerala, but her batchmate in J & K got her SP posting much, much later.

She does not comment on the Kerala Story controversy but says POSCO rates are high in the state. In fact, it is the highest in the country, also thanks to better reporting of offences. Ajeetha has been part of the SIT investigating the findings of the Hema committee report on sexual abuse allegations in the Malayalam film industry.

She says her priority remains the protection of children and women, especially in trafficking and sexual harassment cases, besides stamping down on drug trafficking.

She is also the state nodal officer of the State Police Cadet programme, which was the brainchild of Kerala and later adopted by many states. The programme is close to her heart, and she keeps posting about her involvement in the SPC on her social media handles. These are meant to instil social awareness and discipline among the youth and make them shoulder responsibility towards solving social problems.

About 1048 schools have adopted the SPC projects, she says.

She is suddenly in between calls, and soon she slips out of one and is lost once again…

However, what she left behind in those few moments are years of effort, hard work and service, the long journey travelled by that little girl in Coimbatore through IPS training, many postings, challenges, and her being embraced by the people of Kerala as their IG Crime branch.

Meanwhile, as she addresses young student police cadets at an SPC Alumni meet in late 2025 in an Instagram post, in chaste Malayalam and in a diction any Malayali would be proud of, her voice rings with compassion, conviction and enthusiasm to bring about social change in partnership with the very youth who have been struggling with issues like drug abuse.

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It is a promise to carry on her responsibilities in partnership with the youth, the citizens of tomorrow. It is a voice of hope more than that of power and authority.