Kiran Bedi

As a schoolgirl in Amritsar, Kiran loved playing tennis so much she became a national junior champion. When she grew up she wanted to serve her country, so in 1972 she became the very first woman to join the Indian Police Service.

She once had a Prime Minister's car towed for wrong parking, and she turned Tihar — one of Asia's largest prisons — into a place where inmates could learn yoga, read books and start new lives. People began calling her 'Crane Bedi' and, later, a hero.

Kiran Bedi (born 1949 in Amritsar) joined the Indian Police Service in 1972 as its first woman officer. Over a 35-year career she held some of the toughest postings in Delhi, Chandigarh, Mizoram and Goa.

She earned the nickname 'Crane Bedi' in 1982 for ordering a wrongly parked VIP car towed away, and won the United Nations Medal for her peacekeeping work in the Balkans.

Her most influential posting was as Inspector General of Delhi's Tihar Jail from 1993 to 1995, where she introduced Vipassana meditation, literacy programmes, vocational training and legal aid for inmates — reforms that won her the 1994 Ramon Magsaysay Award and are still studied in prison reform courses worldwide. After retiring in 2007 she founded the NGOs Navjyoti and India Vision Foundation, worked with the Anna Hazare anti-corruption movement, and served as Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry from 2016 to 2021.