• NET Web Desk

The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) has deployed a team of three women rescuers for undertaking operations along flood-ravaged Assam, making it one of the first operations where female combatants have been entrusted to tackle a major disaster.

Constables – O Indrani Devi, Alpana Das and Rekha Devi are rescuing the stranded and providing food, medicines, water alongwith other relief materials to the flood-affected victims in Silchar.

While Indrani Devi hails from Manipur, Das and Rekha Devi are from Assam and belong to the 12th National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) battalion based in Arunachal Pradesh.

The women are part of a team, comprising of men NDRF personnel equipped with life-saving jackets and inflatable boats.

According to the Director General of NDRF – Atul Karwal, the women personnel are “being increasingly deployed for active disaster relief and rescue operations and the force has made a policy to send them across as teams, wherever it is possible.”

“The women personnel that we have trained are themselves volunteering to go for active rescue operations. I am very happy to see their enthusiasm and the capacity to undertake hard duties,” he said.

The NDRF currently have 178 women personnel in combat, after it started inducting them in late 2020s.

They have been deployed for alert, backup and assistance duties on a number of occasions in the past, but the Assam floods is an operation where they are a part of an active NDRF team, working on grounds to help the victims.

A customized two piece orange and blue coloured combat dungaree has been designed for the female combatants.