New Delhi. 09 March, 2016. It was a date with history for 26-year-old Priya Semwal, who lost her husband in a counter-insurgency operation two years back. She is one of the 62 women commissioned into the Indian Army recently at the Officers Training Academy in Chennai.
It is actually a story which could make a real Bollywood motivational saga. From a college going girl married to an Army soldier in 2006 to an officer commissioned into the Corps of the Electrical and Mechanical Engineering (EME) of the Army, it is a tale which generations will remember. .
A mother of the then four-year-old child, future looked bleak for the widow of Naik Amit Sharma serving with the 14 Rajput regiment, killed in a counter-insurgency operation near hilly Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh in 2012. But she was destined to make history. This is the first time, the wife of a Non Commissioned Officer (NCO) has become an officer.
In first-year of graduation Priya got married in 2006 , continued to complete her post graduation in Mathematics and a Bachelor’s degree in teaching before teaching in a coaching institute at Dehradun. Priya Semwal picked up the threads of her life and started the process of preparing gor a career in the army, which is a tough task in normal circumstances, would definitely have been herculean for a mother and a army widow. But where there is a will there is a way. Priya is an inspiration for many young people who loose hope after tragedy in life and also for girls who want Army to be their destination.
