Squadron Leader Mohana Singh has become India's first woman pilot to be part of a Tejas fighter squadron of the Indian Air Force (IAF).
She was among the first three women fighter pilots—the others being Avani Chaturvedi and Bhawana Kanth—commissioned into the IAF in June 2016.
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Mohana Singh has been assigned the No 18 'Flying Bullets' Squadron, the IAF officials said. She was earlier part of the No 3 fighter squadron which is based at Nal in Rajasthan. Singh was flying MiG-21 Bison as part of the No 3 squadron.
She had participated in the recently concluded Tarang Shakti multilateral air combat exercise.
Hhailing from Jhunjhunu district in Rajasthan, she comes from a family of veteran. Her grandfather was a flight gunner in the Aviation Research Centre, while her father is a warrant officer in the Indian Air Force.
Singh, Chaturvedi and Kanth were commissioned into the IAF in 2016, less than a year after the Union government decided to open the fighter stream for women on an experimental basis.
In February 2018, Chaturvedi became the first Indian woman to fly a fighter aircraft solo when she flew a MiG-21 bison, undertaking the sortie from the IAF's Jamnagar base.
