Hyderabad’s newly-appointed police commissioner B. Sumathi wanted to understand a simple but unsettling question: how safe does a woman feel alone on the city’s streets after midnight? What she experienced shocked even seasoned officers. Standing alone in plain clothes at a bus stop in Dilsukhnagar shortly after midnight on May 2, the senior IPS officer was approached repeatedly by men within minutes. Some allegedly passed vulgar remarks, others tried to engage her, while several were reportedly drunk or under the influence of narcotics, according to police officials. Nearby police teams monitoring the covert operation detained more than 40 men during the exercise, many of them teenagers and middle-aged men accused of harassing women standing or walking alone at night. The undercover operation, carried out barely a week after Sumathi took charge as commissioner of the newly formed Malkajgiri police commissionerate, has sparked fresh debate over women’s safety in public spaces across Hyderabad.…