Mother of two beats all odds, set to become IPS

This week the mother of two finally got selected for the Indian Police Service, 13 years after marriage and after undergoing four surgeries. Having cracked the Uttar Pradesh Civil Services earlier, she is currently posted as SDM (Sadar) in Firozabad. In the civil services examination of 2020 she secured the 234th rank and was this week placed in the IPS.

Bushra Arshad Bano had earlier been selected for the Indian Revenue Service also. But it was the IPS that she had set her heart on. Known to be stubborn in her family, she laughs happily to recall that she ignored good natured advice and continued to prepare for the civil services examination. She did not seek the help of any coaching institute either.

She graduated at the young age of 17 and a half from Kanpur and by the time she was 20, had secured an MBA degree. After marrying an engineer she and her husband had migrated to Saudi Arabia, where her husband Asmar Hussain taught in an engineering college. But although she herself was employed in the corporate sector, both of them decided to return home.

Her husband says his wife was a smart child and visitors to the family would tell her parents that she would become a Collector. That might have played in her mind. “She always preferred sitting in the front seat of the car,” he adds with a smile.

(This article was first published in National Herald on Sunday.)