Sanjukta Parasor: 1st Woman Officer to Lead CRPF’s CoBRA Unit
Senior IPS officer Sanjukta Parasor has been appointed as the first woman Inspector General (IG) of the CRPF’s elite Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) unit, marking a significant milestone in India’s security forces. She will succeed 1996-batch IPS officer Danesh Rana.
- A 2006-batch IPS officer, she is known as the “Iron Lady of Assam” for her counter-insurgency work in the Northeast, involving field policing, national security operations and handling of insurgency-related challenges.
- She previously served as a Deputy Inspector General in the National Investigation Agency (NIA), working on terrorism and extremism-related investigations.
- Her appointment marks a milestone in women’s leadership in India’s security forces, particularly in specialised counter-insurgency and jungle warfare operations.
- The Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) is a specialised unit of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) established to conduct jungle warfare and guerrilla operations, particularly against Maoist insurgency. Its personnel are selected from the CRPF and receive intensive training in commando tactics and jungle warfare.
- A total of 10 CoBRA units were raised between 2008 and 2011. These battalions are deployed in Left Wing Extremism (LWE)-affected and insurgency-prone areas across states such as Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Assam and Meghalaya.
- CoBRA specialises in anti-Naxal operations, intelligence-based missions, long-range patrols, ambush and counter-ambush operations in challenging terrains, making it one of the CRPF’s key specialised operational forces.
