R Susheela rescued 90 people

At the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Bengaluru, there's no sign of a Daya-like character from the investigative TV series CID who breaks open doors every few minutes.

Instead, in a quiet room, police inspector R Susheela flips through her files. As a member of CID's financial investigation unit, she is almost always on the move, and hard to get hold of - unless, of course, you have an arrest warrant against you.

Susheela has lost count of the number of cases she's handled; the number of bad guys she's put behind bars; and the number of lives she's saved. But if media reports are anything to go by, she's rescued more than 90 women and children during her stint with CID's anti-human trafficking unit. The feat also won the 37-year-old a gold medal from Karnataka's chief minister in 2012.

Preferring to wear sarees only on occasions, she's most comfortable in kurtis and always sports short hair. As she walks down the pathway, a uniformed policeman salutes her; she responds with a subtle nod and moves on. Susheela does exude the aura of a tough cop - and with good reason.

On her first posting, in Mysuru as a sub-inspector in 2003, she was asked to join an all-women police station. "I told them that I was there as a police personnel, not as a policewoman," she says. "I was told the areas I was assigned had rowdy thugs, so I should take up a post elsewhere. But if you are confident, you can deal with everything."

Uncertainty is part of the job, she says, recalling the time when she had to chase a culprit for more than 2 km. "We were raiding a hideout when a culprit escaped. When I finally caught up with him, he flung me down two storeys," says Susheela, laughingly.

The chief minister's medal may have been an acknowledgment of her work, but she doesn't venture into dark alleys for recognition, says the sleuth, whose phone number, coincidentally, ends with 007. "I do it for self-satisfaction. We've helped many women to get out of the flesh trade, many of them Russians and Bangladeshis. What bothers me the most is that a lot of them are children - they get lured by easy money and don't realise what they are doing till they can't get out," she explains.

Susheela is happy to see more women in the police force now. "There were only five of us in my batch of 2001; now there are about 15 to 20 women in every batch. This has helped increase understanding between the genders," she says.

Susheela thinks she's exactly where she wanted to be, and she's happy to have learnt what she has - sensitivity training is one of those things. "When I joined in 2001, we used to treat women involved in the flesh trade as the guilty party. It's only now that we've realised that they are victims too."

For all her hard work, her four-year-old son doesn't fully comprehend why his mother isn't like "other mothers". However, her eight-year-old daughter appreciates her dedication. "I always tell her, if people have to sleep well at night, then the police must do their jobs," says Susheela. Before she rushes out to "track down a criminal", her vision is to live in a state where "there is no fear in anyone's heart." Tagore would have approved.