Senior IPS officer Archana Ramasundram has been appointed as Director-General of Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), the first woman to head a paramilitary force. Ramasundram is currently Director, National Crime Records Bureau. She has been appointed to the post till the date of her superannuation, September 30 next year. 58-year-old Ramasundram is the first woman police officer to have been appointed as the chief of a paramilitary force. The SSB is entrusted with guarding the country’s frontiers with Nepal and Bhutan.

There are five paramilitary forces — the SSB, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border Security Force (BSF), Central Industrial Security Force and Indo Tibetan Border Police — and none has ever had a woman chief.

The Tamil Nadu cadre officer was in news in 2014 over her appointment as Additional Director in the CBI. Her appointment was also challenged in the Supreme Court, after which she was moved to the NCRB as its chief.

Besides her, IPS officers — K. Durga Prasad and K.K. Sharma — have been appointed Director-Generals of the CRPF and the BSF, respectively. They will take over after the incumbent chiefs of these forces retire at the end of this month.

Prasad, a 1981 batch IPS officer of Andhra Pradesh cadre, was in 2014 unceremoniously removed as chief of the Special Protection Group, which provides security to the Prime Minister, former Prime Ministers and their family members, during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to Nepal to attend the SAARC summit. He was in January last year appointed Special Director-General of the CRPF, the force entrusted with multiple duties in the internal security domain including, anti-Naxal operations.