The India Justice Report (IJR) 2025 reveals that fewer than 1,000 women occupy senior roles like Director General or Superintendent of Police, with nearly 90 percent of women in the force serving in constabulary positions.
Out of 2.4 lakh women in the police, only 960 are in the Indian Police Service (IPS) ranks, while 24,322 hold non-IPS officer positions such as Deputy Superintendent, Inspector, or Sub-Inspector.
The report titled “Ranking States on the Capacity of Police, Judiciary, Prisons, and Legal Aid” observed that, despite growing awareness about the need for gender diversity in law enforcement, not a single state or Union Territory has met its target for women’s representation in the police force.
The report stated that as of January 2023, the overall representation of women in the police—the civil police, District Armed Reserve (DAR), Special Armed Police Battalion, and Indian Reserve Battalion (IRB)—stood at 12.3 percent, up from 11.7 percent in January 2022.
Among the 18 large and mid-sized states, Bihar, at 24 percent, leads in women’s representation in the police.
While Bihar also recorded the highest growth, from 21 percent in 2022 to 24 percent in 2024, nine other states and Union Territories, including Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, and West Bengal, saw a decline.
Madhya Pradesh tops the chart for the highest number of women Deputy Superintendents of Police (DySPs), with 133.
According to the report, despite growing awareness about the need for gender diversity in law enforcement, not a single state or Union Territory has met its target for women’s representation in the police force.
The report claims that if current rates remain constant, it would take Andhra Pradesh and Bihar roughly three years, but for Jharkhand, Tripura, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, it would take around 200 years to meet the overall benchmark of 33 percent.
The report also found that while 38 percent of judges in the lower judiciary were women, this number fell to 14 percent at the high courts.
For judges, based on data up to February–March 2025, it notes that while the share of women in the subordinate judiciary has steadily increased across all states, similar growth has not been observed in the high courts.
The share of women in the district judiciary has also increased to 38 percent in the same period. However, the share of Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Scheduled Castes (SCs) in the district judiciary remains low at 5 percent and 14 percent, respectively.
In addition, the report noted that fewer states are meeting the job quota targets for Scheduled Castes (SC) compared to Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC). At the officer level, only 5 states met the SC quota, while 7 met the ST quota and 9 met the OBC quota.
In the police force, SCs account for 17 percent and STs 12 percent, falling short of proportional representation.
The report also highlighted that India has only 15 judges per million people, far below the Law Commission’s 1987 recommendation of 50.
High Courts are operating with 33 percent vacancies and district courts with 21 percent, leading to massive workloads of up to 15,000 cases per judge in High Courts like Allahabad and Madhya Pradesh.
District court judges, on average, are handling 2,200 cases each.
They pointed out prison overcrowding as another area of concern, with a national average occupancy rate of 131 percent.
“Prison population is likely to be against space available by 2030,” they said, with India’s prison population projected to hit 6.8 lakh by 2030.
Uttar Pradesh has some of the worst instances; one in every three jails there holds over 250 percent of its capacity, the report said.
The availability of medical personnel in jails also remains inadequate, with the prisoner-doctor ratio standing at 775:1 against the recommended 300:1.
In many large states, including Haryana, West Bengal, and Uttar Pradesh, this ratio exceeds 1,000:1.
Among the small states, Sikkim retained the top rank, followed by Himachal Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh.
Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha showed the most improvement among large and mid-sized states between 2022 and 2025.
Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand also improved, surpassing Gujarat and Haryana on the improvement index.
The report also evaluated the functioning of 25 State Human Rights Commissions and featured essays on access to justice for persons with disabilities and mediation as an alternative dispute resolution method.
The IJR warned that unless systemic reforms are prioritized, the justice system will continue to disproportionately burden the vulnerable and marginalized.
The IJR 2025, released on Tuesday, ranked Karnataka as the top-performing state among the 18 large and mid-sized states in terms of justice delivery, maintaining its position from 2022.
Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu followed Karnataka, with the five southern states outperforming others due to better diversity, infrastructure, and staffing across sectors.
The report, a collaboration and research project between six organizations—such as the Centre for Social Justice (IDEAL), Common Cause, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), Daksh, TISS-Prayas, and Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy—has sourced information from official portals such as the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Ministry of Law and Justice, National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG), and Prison Statistics India, among others.
