NAGPUR: City police ranked 5th in the state to provide women cops with facilities in the form of separate resting and washing quarters.
In building facilities for women policemen, city police are ahead of their Pune counterparts. The 30 police stations in Nagpur have 34 washrooms and 14 restrooms, while the same number of police stations in Pune have 30 washrooms and 16 restrooms. Thane is the best in the state with 35 police stations with 41 washrooms and 32 restrooms. Nagpur’s government railway police (GRP) is the worst on the list, with none of its 16 police stations having either a restroom or a laundry room for women cops.
There is no mention of Mumbai police in the police station-wise list of each unit across Maharashtra, which has been highlighted on the state police website.
There is a lot of hues and cry on different platforms, followed by deputations to different units and also the government, regarding the establishment of basic facilities for women cops, including separate resting and washing rooms for them and special arrangements for long bandobast mobile toilets.
A survey conducted under the guidance of an IG ranking officer presented in 2016 at the 7th National Congress on Women Police had brought the problems they were facing to the fore. Likewise, results on women’s issues in various security forces were also included in the reports of the Standing Committee of Parliament and the Commission on Administrative Reforms, which were also included in the survey highlighting the need to build basic facilities.
City police commissioner BK Upadhyay said most police stations have separate washrooms for women, particularly the newly induced ones, while some have restrooms. “Separate mobile toilets and resting facilities were made available to women cops wherever they were on duty during the just-concluded winter assembly session,” he said.
A woman cop said that resting rooms are as necessary as washrooms on condition of anonymity. “Only having separate washrooms and no restrooms will not serve the purpose as it is inconvenient for women to sleep or lie in the presence of men,” she said.
In each floor of the three-story building, one of the best and state’s first smart Lakadganj police station in east Nagpur has a five-bedded resting room with attached toilets and separate washrooms.
“The spacious restroom in the newly built police station is one of the best in the state where we also plan to open a creche for their kids if our plan works out,” Lakadganj Police Station senior PI Narendra Hiware said.
In the province, there are 1,010 police stations with 837 washrooms and 571 women cops ‘ restrooms.
