Jalandhar, September 06: Punjab Frontier of Border Security Force (BSF) is all set to deploy women constables at the highly sensitive Indo-Pak Border, as first batch of the Battalion would be deployed within a week.
“First batch of 178 women constables was recently passed out and accordingly an initial training was imparted to them and within a week they will be deployed on Indo-Pak border”, Himmat Singh, Inspector General (IG) of BSF told reporters in Jalandhar.
Initially the women staff would be deployed for frisking of women villagers who cross the fence for going to their fields and later on after required training they would be deployed for guarding the border along with their male colleagues, IG said adding that total 595 women constables were selected for training and after their pass out, all of them would be deployed on Indo-Pak border.
Many a times the villagers of border areas raised their objection on frisking of their women folk by male staff of BSF and deployment of women staff would overcome villagers’ objection as well, IG added.
Asked whether the women constables would add to the glory of Beating Retreat parade on Wagha Border, IG ruled out the same and so far nothing has been decided in this regard.
IG revealed that shifting of fence in the Ferozepur and Abohar sector start soon, survey and land acquisition process of which has already been completed. “There were large chunk of land (about 23 KMs) was available on Indian side and accordingly decision of shifting of the fence was decided after thorough survey”, he added.
IG admitted that there were large number of attempts were noticed to smuggle fake currency through Indo-Pak border and even several such attempts were thwarted by the vigilant border guarding force by seizing fake currency of Rs 20 lakh last year followed by of Rs 55 lakh in the current year so far.
“Thermal imagers and Night Vision Devices (NVDs) were proved boon for thwarting the attempts of smuggling from the neighbouring country”, IG said adding that recently it was noticed that even the smugglers have started using NVDs, which has become a cause of worry.
Claiming that the BSF has achieved success in intercepting the large scale of narcotics this year as so far 107.5 KG of Heroin was seized as compared to 106 KG in the previous year, IG said adding that large quality of arms and ammunition including 16 pistols seized with apprehension of 88 international drug smugglers.
–Agencies