Down but not out...

She can neither tie herself to a rope and jump off a running train, nor does she have the TRP-grabbing capabilities akin to India’s first and highest ranking woman police officer turned activist Kiran Bedi. Rather, at under 5.5 feet, a tomboy hairdo and no-claptrap tone about her, 42-year-old Damayanti Sen hardly matches the conformist view of a super-cop. The 1996 batch officer may have preferred a low profile, but for the Park-Street rape victim, who was gang-raped at gunpoint in February this year, Damayanti Sen is truly a "tigress and champ"!

After the AMRI-blaze and hooch tragedy, the Park Street rape case earlier this year has undeniably been the hottest topic for debates among Kolkatans. The post-incident comment by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee did not help matters much. Terming the allegations "fabricated" Mamata Di said that the rape charges were “a conspiracy to malign her government.”

It was Damayanti Sen, the then Joint Commissioner (Crime) of Kolkata Police, who cracked the case proving that the victim’s rape-allegations were not "cooked up" at all. In a daring display of duty, Sen went against the chief minister’s public rant, looked in the right places and wrapped up the case complete with three arrested culprits.

And while this should have been a happy-ending for the duty-bound cop, things soon went topsy-turvy. Within days of cracking the case, Sen was shunted out of her post to one of the most insignificant postings as Deputy Inspector General (Training) at Barrackpore, far away from the city. Sandhi Mukherjee, the former Inspector General of the Intelligence Bureau, believes Sen became a victim of political vendetta. “Damayanti dared to go against the CM and arrested the rapists. She is not just a super cop, but a symbol of how an independent bureaucracy should work despite political inferences. I think all cops in India should follow her footsteps of not serving the interest of any political party,” says Mukherjee.

Damayanti Sen is maintaining her distance from the media these days. But TSI caught up with her brother Partha Dasgupta, a journalist in a vernacular daily. According to him, much before she cracked the IPS exams, Damayanti had got a lucrative offer from a multinational bank. But so set was she on her goal of joining the police service, that she didn't bat an eyelid before turning down the offer. “For a middle class family like us, police service for a girl was still not preferred at that time. But Damayanti was steely in her determination,” he explains. Let's hope that the recent callous treatment at the hands of her political masters does not make Damayanti Sen regret the decision that she took a good 16 years ago.