34-year-old woman CISF officer Rashmi Bedwal supervises Bengaluru airport security

BENGALURU: A high pressure job of supervising the security at the terminal of the Kempegowda International airport (KIA) is handled by 34-year-old Rashmi Bedwal. This Deputy Commandant of the Central Industrial Security Force, also the mother of a little girl, is the only one in Karnataka and one of the few women in the country holding the post. 

Hailing from Uttarakhand, Bedwal is a B.Tech graduate in Biotechnology from the Meerut Institute of Engineering and Technology. “After clearing my CAPF Assitant Commandant exams in 2013, I began my career at the Mumbai International Airport. There was enormous resistance from my relatives who felt it was a male-dominated field.  However, I decided to take the plunge,” she said. Her mother, Nirmala, is a homemaker and her father, MS Bedwal, a PWD engineer, backed her, she added. 

In her batch, she was the only woman. Bedwal met her husband, Anuranjan Kumar Anuj, also a Deputy Commandant at KIA now, during her training at the National Industrial Security Academy at Hyderabad. After completed 4.5 years at Mumbai airport, she was posted at Bengaluru. 

Now, she heads around 300 women in the rank of constables, Sub-Inspectors and Inspectors. “At CISF, women are completely accepted into the fold. I have never faced any discrimination in my career and in fact, it is a very encouraging environment,” she said.