 "7 BSF women led by AC Neha Bhandari defended 2 border posts for 3 days, forced Pak abandon forward locations")
Seven women officers of the BSF contributed to the success of Operation Sindoor after they fearlessly defended India at the international border in Jammu and Kashmir’s Akhnoor.
Under the leadership of Assistant Commandant Neha Bhandari, who joined the force just three years ago, seven young Border Security Force female personnel were deployed at two border posts for three days in Akhnoor.
Interestingly, Bhandari is the first woman officer to be posted on the frontline since the Army is yet to utilise female officers for such roles. The team of women officers, called “Seema Praharis”, defended their posts until the enemy stepped back from their locations.
Under the command of AC Bhandari, six BSF women held their ground at forward posts, two of them veterans, four relatively new to the force. Manjit Kour and Malkit Kour from Punjab brought with them nearly 17 years of experience, firmly positioned at the compact bunkers that double as observation posts.
For the others, Swapna Rath and Shampa Basak of West Bengal, Sumi Xess from Jharkhand, and Jyoti Banian from Odisha, it was a new challenge. Having joined the BSF as recently as 2023, they now found themselves in a high-stakes, near-combat setting. Backed by rigorous training and inspired leadership, Neha herself comes from a family steeped in CRPF service; her mother is still actively serving, and they embraced the challenge without flinching.
Their male seniors had given the women officers to back out, given the intensity of the situation at IB, according to a report by the Times of India. “I obviously declined. When we had trained as soldiers, our training regimen and resources were the same as our male counterparts. Operation Sindoor presented us with a rare, early-career opportunity to prove that we are equally capable as men to take on the enemy,” AC Bhandari said.
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