New Delhi: According to a new report, there are less than 1,000 women in senior positions in the Indian police force, such as directors – agencies and police chiefs, and 90% of all women serving in police stations.
TATA Trusts initiated and supported by several civil society organizations and data partners, in the India Justice Report (IJR) 2025, tracked national performance in four regions – police, judiciary, prisons and legal aid. According to the report, despite growing awareness of the need for gender diversity in law enforcement, no state or union territory has met its goal of representing women in the police force. IJR released Tuesday 2025, rated Karnataka as the best performing state of the 18 large and medium-sized states for judicial delivery, maintaining its position from 2022.
Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and Tamil Nadu followed Karnataka, with the five southern countries outperforming the diversity, infrastructure and staffing of other sectors, while surpassing other states. The report also highlights gender differences within the police hierarchy. Among police officers, only 2.4 million women have only 960 in the Indian Police Station (IPS), while 24,322 hold non-adjutant positions such as deputy director, inspector or deputy inspector. The Indian Police Department (IPS) has authorized strength of 5,047 police officers. A staggering 217,000 women serve in the police station. Madhya Pradesh has the highest ranking list among Deputy Director of Police (Dysps), with about 133 of them. Now, about 78% of police stations have women’s help desks, and 86% of prisons have video conferencing facilities, and between 20199 and 2023, typical driving costs in legal aid have reached nearly 2023 and 2023.46 6.46 6.46 6.46 6.46 6.46 6.46. During the same period, the share of women in the judiciary in the region also increased to 38%.
However, the shares of the pre-determined tribes (STS) and pre-determined castes (SC) of the regional judiciary were lower, at 5% and 14%, respectively.
Among the police force, SCS accounts for 17%, STS accounts for 12%, with no proportional representation.
Paralegal volunteers (PLVs) considered key links to access legal aid have dropped 38% in five years and are now only 3 plv per hundred thousand people. The report says only 25 psychologists/psychiatrists are available in prisons nationwide. The IJR also marks serious infrastructure and personnel flaws throughout the judicial system. India has only 15 people per million people, far below the 50-person recommendation of the Law Commission in 1987.
The High Court, with 33% of the vacancies and the operation of the District Court, accounted for 21%, led to a large amount of work – in high courts such as Allahabad and Madhya Pradesh, each judge had as many as 15,000 cases per judge. District Court judges handle an average of 2,200 cases per person.
Overcrowding is another area of concern, with an average national occupancy rate of 131%.
The report says the situation in Uttar Pradesh is the worst case – one in every three prisons holds more than 250% of its capacity. In addition, the availability of medical staff in prisons is still insufficient, while the ratio of prisoners is 775:1, rather than the recommended 300:1.
In many large states, including Haryana, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, the ratio is over 1,000:1.
Among the small states, Sikkim maintains the highest ranking, followed by Himaal Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh. Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha showed the greatest progress in large and medium-sized states between 2022 and 2025.
Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand also improved, surpassing Gujarat and Haryana’s improvement index. The report also evaluates the operation of 25 state human rights commissions and presents papers on judicial dissemination of persons with disabilities and mediation as alternative dispute resolution methods. India’s prison population is expected to reach Rs 6.8 lakh by 2030, and the IJR warns that the judicial system will continue to bear the burden of vulnerability and marginalization unless system reform is prioritized. The report provides information from official portals such as the National Criminal Records Agency (NCRB), the Ministry of Law and Justice, the National Justice Data Grid (NJDG) (NJDG) and Indian Prison Statistics.
