Sanjukta Parashar Becomes First Woman to Head CRPF's CoBRA as Inspector General
IPS officer Sanjukta Parashar has been appointed Inspector General of the CRPF's CoBRA, becoming the first woman officer to hold the post in the elite unit.
Sanjukta Parashar, a 2006-batch IPS officer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre, has been appointed Inspector General of the Commando Battalion for Resolute Action, the Central Reserve Police Force's specialised jungle warfare unit. She is the first woman officer to hold the post.
CoBRA was raised in 2008 as a guerrilla warfare force within the CRPF, built for operations against left wing extremist groups in forested terrain. It has ten battalions deployed across Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Bihar, Maharashtra and the North-East. Its personnel are trained in small-team tactics, tracking, improvised explosive device detection and long-range patrolling, and the battalions operate from forward bases rather than static camps. The Inspector General commands the force's operational direction and training standards. Recruitment to CoBRA is from within the CRPF, with personnel selected on physical and aptitude criteria and put through a specialised course at the counter-insurgency and jungle warfare schools. The battalions are equipped differently from regular CRPF units, with lighter loads, communication equipment suited to forest conditions and unmanned aerial systems for surveillance.
Parashar has served about twenty years in the Assam-Meghalaya cadre. Her early career included district charges in Assam's Sonitpur and Udalguri districts during the period of operations against the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, where she led operations against the group's cadres. She later held assignments in the state police and on central deputation. Officers who have worked in Assam's western districts carry direct field experience of counter-insurgency in forest and riverine terrain, which is the same operating environment CoBRA battalions work in. Assam's Sonitpur and Udalguri districts border the forested foothills along the Arunachal Pradesh boundary, terrain that requires the same patrolling and small-team methods the CoBRA battalions use. Officers who have run district police in those areas handle both the operational side and the civil interface with village populations caught between the security forces and armed groups.
Before this appointment she was serving on central deputation with the CRPF at Deputy Inspector General and Inspector General rank. The CRPF is the largest of the central armed police forces with about 3.25 lakh personnel, and its IG-rank officers command sectors, specialised units or training establishments.
The appointment comes as the Centre has set a deadline of March 2026 for ending left wing extremism, and security forces have reported a sharp reduction in the number of affected districts and in incidents of violence. CoBRA battalions have been at the centre of operations in the Abujhmad forests of Chhattisgarh and the Jharkhand-Bihar border areas. Command appointments to the unit are made by the Ministry of Home Affairs and carry operational responsibility for the most exposed deployments in the force. CoBRA battalions operate alongside state police special units such as the Greyhounds in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, the District Reserve Guard in Chhattisgarh and the Jharkhand Jaguar. Command of the unit involves coordinating deployments with these forces and with the state police leadership in each affected state.
Women officers command a small share of senior operational posts in the central armed police forces, and the CRPF has separately raised women's battalions used in law and order and election duties. A woman officer taking charge of a combat unit of this kind is a departure from the pattern of women officers being placed in administrative, training or women-specific formations. The CRPF has raised women's battalions since 1986 and deploys them on law and order, election and Naxal-affected area duties, but the specialised combat units have been staffed and commanded by men. Appointments of this kind change the pattern without altering the recruitment rules for the unit itself.
Parashar belongs to the 2006 batch of the Indian Police Service, Assam-Meghalaya cadre, and takes charge as Inspector General of CoBRA.
