Women soldiers of Assam Rifles have been deployed at Jammu and Kashmir’s Kupwara to keep a check and balance on the drug smuggling racket. It is reported that they had got an intelligence report about women and children being used for smuggling, and hence had been stationed there. This area is close to Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK), and it is suspected that illegal activities might be carried out, as Pakistan-backed terrorists make attempts to infiltrate into the Indian side.
They have also been entrusted with the task of guarding the national border close to the LoC. Deployed at an altitude of ten thousand feet, at the top of the Sadhana Top of the LoC, nearly half a dozen ‘rifle women’, led by a woman officer of the Indian Army, have been tasked to guard the road going towards the LoC.
This deployment is an important move since it marks one of the first equal provisions that have been granted to women in the defence sector following the recent grant of the permanent commission for women in the Indian Army.
Assam Rifles, which is India’s oldest paramilitary force, has a unit called ‘Rifle Women’ of which these women soldiers are a part.