ITBP women combat force to guard VIPs

Trained in commando and sniper skills, the lady recruits are set for deployment for VVIP security, including the President and Vice-President besides getting pitched in the anti-Naxalite operations and at border check posts. “They will also assist in providing security duty to the pilgrims for Kailash Mansarovar yatra which would solve the problem of escorting women on the yatra,”  I S Duhan, Commandant, Basic Training Centre (BTC), ITBP, told Deccan Herald.

Some of them will be pressed into service in the ongoing anti-Maoist operations in naxal-infested states like Chhatisgarh. “They would prove useful in searching/frisking women in the naxalite regions since it was posing operational problems for the forces,” said Duhan. Currently, four battalions of the ITBP, part of the Central forces currently involved in anti-naxalite operations, are pitched into battle with the Maoists, mainly in Chhatisgarh.
The freshly trained batch of 209 women constables who will pass out on January 29 is part of the over 400 women constables recruited by the ITBP a year ago to raise a battalion of women in combat ranks. The ITBP, basically a mountain-trained force, is currently deployed along the 3,488-km long India-China border.

Home Minister P Chidambaram will take the salute of the passing-out parade at the Basic Training Centre of the ITBP at Bhanu in Haryana, said Duhan.
DH News Service