When the Central Reserve Police Force needed a new commander for its most specialised jungle warfare unit this September, it looked to an officer whose name has followed Assam's insurgency story for nearly two decades. 

Sanjukta Parashar, the 2006-batch IPS officer once nicknamed the Iron Lady of Assam for leading raids against Bodo militants, has become the first woman to head the CRPF's Commando Battalion for Resolute Action, or CoBRA, since the force was raised in 2008-09.

Parashar succeeds 1996-batch officer Danesh Rana as Inspector General of the 10-battalion unit, which trains commandos for jungle and guerrilla warfare against Left Wing Extremism and insurgency in India's northeast. A senior officer told the Press Trust of India that it marks the first time in CoBRA's history that a woman has led the entire force.

How Assam's forests earned her a nickname

Parashar's introduction to frontline policing came in Udalguri, where communal clashes between Bodo groups and migrants tested a young assistant commandant fresh off her 2008 posting to Makum. It was her stint as Superintendent of Police in Sonitpur, however, that made her name. 

Leading operations against the National Democratic Front of Bodoland through 2013 and 2014, her teams killed 16 militants and arrested 64, a run of operations that turned her into the subject of national profiles built around the........

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