Women cops get self-defence tips from LA girl

KOLKATA: On Thursday,

Shibpur Police Lines

ground in Howrah turned into an open-air classroom for 160-odd women cops, who took tips on the nuances of self-defence from a 20-year old

taekwondo expert

from Los Angeles. A believer in gender equality, Pooja Nagpal, who has been donning the teacher’s hat for the past 11 days, feels the cops will emerge stronger and more confident after the training, which ends on January 8.

In 2012, the Nirbhaya rape case had left Nagpal, then a 14-year-old kid, shaken. A second-degree black belt in taekwondo, she returned to India the next year to teach women the tactics of self-defence and started off from a small village in Himachal Pradesh. Since then, there has been no looking back. She kept returning to India during her school breaks every year to empower more women.

“Ever since I enrolled for college, I have not been able to come back because of academic assignments, projects and seminars. I am happy that I am back after two years to do what I love — teach women to protect themselves,” the student of electrical engineering and computer science at Berkeley University told TOI.

After teaching women in north Indian states, this time she chose Bengal because of her father Pawan Nagpal’s Bengal connection. Nagpal senior is an alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur. She was given the go-ahead immediately after she approached the Howrah Police commissioner with the voluntary training programme proposal.

Nagpal doesn’t mind travelling over 20km daily from New Town, where she is putting up at a relative’s place, to Shibpur Police Lines for the training sessions. “Teaching the cops is easier as they are more disciplined and receptive. My classes earlier were with school children and girls from villages,” she said.

In May 2018, some cops, including women, were injured when a clash broke out at Howrah’s Kazipara when they tried to stop members of a political party from marching to Nabanna. “When we go for law-and-order duty, the public, mostly men, think that women cops are useless when it comes to physical strength. During the training, I realized that it is not physical strength that makes one strong. We need to be stronger mentally as well, and this I have learnt from the training,” said constable Archana Majhi, who has been in service for six years.

“This training will surely boost the confidence of our women cops, giving them mental strength while adding to their agility,” said Tanmay Ray Chaudhuri, commissioner of Howrah City Police.