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India is enrolling women for the first time in a combat role, overturning a mindset in the country's security establishment that women are no good at defending frontiers or fighting wars. The largely conservative country's 1.3-million strong army has less than 1000 women, all of them in non-combat jobs such as engineering and nursing.
But India's Border Security Force (BSF) says it wants to change with the times and recognise the many roles Indian women play today -- from software engineers and space scientists to sportswomen and business czars.
"So far we were not recruiting ladies, maybe because of the nature of our duty, and the thought was that ladies are not suitable," Ashish Kumar Mitra, BSF's director general, told Reuters in an interview late on Thursday.
To begin with, BSF will recruit 750 women guards primarily for frisking duties, checking human trafficking and drug smuggling.
Once seasoned, they will be deployed along the country's borders with Pakistan to the west, and Bangladesh in the east, which New Delhi says are the most common entry points for militants plotting attacks against the country.
Mitra said the BSF was turning to women after it found that male guards were unable to effectively frisk women drug peddlers.
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