Captain Abhilasha Barak became the Army Aviation Corps’ first female officer after successfully completing the combat aviation course. She is now a combat aviator.

The director-general and colonel commandant of Army Aviation awarded her with the coveted “wings” together with 36 other Army pilots during a valedictory event at the Combat Army Aviation Training School in Nashik.

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Born in Haryana, Barak is 26 years old. She is the daughter of Col. S. Om Singh (Retd). She finished her graduation from The Lawrence School in Sanawar.

She received her B-Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Delhi Technological University in 2016 and was placed at Deloitte in the United States.

She received an ‘A’ in the Army Air Defence Young Officers course and a 75.70% on the Air Traffic Management and Air Laws course. She passed the Part B promotional exam on her first try.

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Barak joined the Army Air Defence Corps in September 2018. During her attachment with the Corps of Army Air Defence, President Ram Nath Kovind appointed her as a Contingent Commander for Presentation of Colours to Army Air Defence.

Barak finished multiple professional military courses before joining the Army Aviation Corps.

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In an interview with the Indian Army, Abhilasha stated that she had always grown up in military cantonments and was always surrounded by people in uniform, so she thought it was normal, but she realised she had been living a completely different life after her father retired from the military in 2011.

Talking about how she decided that the military was the place in which she belonged, Barak revealed that when she witnessed her elder brother’s passing out parade at Indian Military Academy in 2013, she became even more convinced that she belonged in the military. 

She added – “After completing my training from Officers Training Academy, Chennai, in 2018, I opted for Army Aviation Corps. As I was filling out the form, I knew I was eligible for only the ground duty role but I ended up mentioning that I had qualified Pilot Aptitude Battery Test and the computerised pilot selection system. Somewhere in my heart, I always knew that the day was not far away when the Indian Army would start inducting women as combat pilots,” she said in the interview.

The Army Aviation Corps is a branch of the Indian Army that was established on November 1, 1986. It is led by the director-general of Army Aviation, a lieutenant-general-rank officer.