They placed two small wooden stools about 3 ft apart and asked her to lie on them. Next, a hulking, 6 ft tall officer stood on her stomach. Meena Salvi gritted her teeth, trying to ignore the pain ripping through her body. Her backbone was breaking, her lungs were about to burst, but she would rather die than buckle under this apologetic 100 kg giant.

Suddenly, it was over. Salvi opened her eyes to find 36 men grinning sheepishly at her. She had done it, passed the "stomach-conditioning" endurance test that some of the toughest policemen had failed. "Somehow, it was not just a personal achievement," says the 29-year-old. "It was a victory for women."

Slim and soft-spoken, Salvi and her colleague Sushma Surve are India's only women commandos who can smash tiles with the flick of a wrist, deliver a mean karate chop and wield a machine gun with the casual panache of a Black Cat. Both belong to the Special Operation Squad (SOS), a crack police team set up in 1991 to flush out Mumbai's underworld. Those were the days when criminals used to be men. Now dons are hiring molls to conduct their dirty business.

Sometime back, legendary mafioso Babloo Srivastava got a "girlfriend" to waylay unsuspecting motorists on lonely highways. When drivers stopped to help, Babloo's gang would swoop in from behind the bushes and loot them. "She was eventually trapped, of course," grins Inspector Satish Karkare who heads the squad.

So were scores of others. In the past couple of years the SOS has "eliminated" dozens of deadly criminals in meticulously planned "encounters". And their hideouts inevitably yield the odd "female accomplice". "But thanks to our Indian culture we don't fight with the ladies," confides Karkare. The solution? Get a woman to do the job. But that is easier said than done. Of Mumbai's 1,000-odd women constables, only 10 were selected for this year's commando training course; only two were found fit enough to qualify. "We learnt karate, kick-boxing, rope climbing, shooting. There were no concessions for females," says 27-year-old Surve. "That made things more challenging."

Surve always wanted to be a policewoman. "They seemed fearless." So when the Mumbai Police advertised for "healthy sportswomen" to join the constabulary in 1994, she applied and got selected. But it turned out to be a desk job for agony aunts in khaki saris -- solving marital spats, settling skirmishes between housewives at slum communal taps.Then came the summons from the SOS, followed by five weeks of "enjoyable" torture under Colonel M.P. Chowdhary, a retired army officer. He punched them as hard as the next man, rode a motorbike over their bellies and taught them to aim a kick where it hurts. "But when he first ordered me to fire an AK-47, I was terrified," admits Salvi. By week four, however, she was shooting like a pro and defusing live hand grenades. Then back home to help mum with the dinner, and do the dishes, like a good girl.

"The women were physically weaker, but mentally more resilient," says Chowdhary. And -- surprise, surprise -- the men were encouraging. The duo is now awaiting its first underworld raid. And making forays into the marriage market. That will be more difficult, grins Surve, given the required qualifications. Wanted: tall, handsome, "stomach-conditioned" match, for a homely female commando.

-- Farah Baria