Scaling new heights is a passion for this mountaineer cop of Uttar Pradesh. The story of this gritty woman police officer underlines the dictum that success follows those who exhibit indomitable courage to excel. Her feat inspires awe. Despite performing the strenuous duties of an IPS officer, Aparna Kumar has carved out a niche for herself as an acclaimed mountaineer. Just wondering, she happens to be the first civil servant to conquer the Seven Summits—the highest peaks of seven continents in the world.
The latest feat of this 2001-batch IPS officer includes scaling yet another summit. – becoming the first woman officer to be appointed as Joint Commissioner of Lucknow Police on Wednesday.
This is not Aparna’s first ‘first’; she has many firsts to her credit, from being the first IPS officer to conquer the Seven Summits or mentoring the first ITBP expedition, which hoisted the tricolour atop Mount Balbala in 2021, to being the first woman director of the ITBP Academy in its six-decade history. And now the first woman officer to become Joint Commissioner of UP’s capital.
This 52-year-old officer had just returned from her study leave after completing the master’s degree in law from the University of California, Berkeley, when she got the news of yet another feat in her policing career. Before it, she was serving as Inspector General in the human rights department.
Aparna is excited to don this new responsibility and promises to incorporate what she learned to strengthen policing outcomes on the ground. And her experience with human rights mechanisms and global best practices is seen as an asset in balancing effective law enforcement with constitutional safeguards.
Aparna outlined her priorities in her new role, saying her focus would be on fair, transparent, and professional investigations. During her stint as Joint Commissioner, the Lucknow police is going to experience the use of technology, scientific evidence, and data-driven policing in crime investigation. She says her aim would be to improve conviction rates while ensuring due process and public trust.
Before this nascent assignment, she was serving as Inspector General. She has already also served as SP of many districts, such as Firozabad, Hamirpur, Sitapur, and Chitrakoot, along with wings such as intelligence, PAC, and Telecom. She also served as sports secretary of the UP Police Board.
Her love for mountaineering crowned her with enviable success and medals. A recipient of the Rani Lakshmi Bai Puraskar (2015) and the Tenzing Norgay National Adventure Award (2018), Aparna notched another world record by conquering Mount Everest in 2016. And in the same year, despite battling pneumonia, this gutsy woman reached the South Pole with broken specs and carrying 35 kg of equipment. Six months later, she scaled Mount Denali in North America, which has a summit elevation of 20,310 feet above sea level, thereby completing the Seven Summits challenge.
As for her new assignment, senior officers in the state police feel Aparna’s exposure to international policing frameworks, including her interactions with several global agencies during training and professional engagements, is expected to be leveraged to modernise crime investigation practices in Lucknow.
What makes her a unique uniformed species is that despite this stellar achievement in life, Aparna does not forget to mentor young officers and women aspirants.
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