NEW DELHI, Oct. 11 -- Squadron Leader Shivangi Singh has become India's first woman fighter pilot to earn the coveted Qualified Flying Instructor (QFI) badge after completing a gruelling six-month course at the Indian Air Force's Tambaram-based Flying Instructors' School in Tamil Nadu, a watershed in the air force's 93-year history, officials aware of the matter said on Friday. Singh is among the 59 officers from the IAF, army, navy and pilots of friendly foreign countries who were conferred the QFI badge at the valedictory ceremony for the 159th course held at Air Force Station Tambaram on October 9, the IAF said on Friday. The ceremony took place a day after the IAF marked its 93rd anniversary. The Pakistani establishment had launched a disinformation campaign about shooting down her plane during Operation Sindoor and capturing her amid other false claims to cover its failures. The 30-year-old Singh, who hails from Varanasi, became India's first woman pilot to fly the French-origin Rafale fighter jet two years ago. She is now certified to train rookie fighter pilots, the officials said. To be sure, women helicopter pilots have earned the QFI badge before Singh. In September, the IAF decommissioned the last of its iconic Soviet-era MiG-21 fighter jets in a rousing send-off that was sharply evocative of the aircraft's heady decades in service and how it shaped the country's air power. Women were first commissioned as fighter pilots after an experimental scheme for their induction into the IAF's combat stream was introduced in 2015. Apart from Rafales and the phased-out MiG-21s, women pilots have been operating fighter aircraft including the Sukhoi-30s, MiG-29s and the light combat aircraft (LCA Mk-1). Singh was in her teens when her grandfather drove her to an air force museum for the first time, the fateful trip marking the beginning of an unending romance with the fascinating world of aviation for the young and impressionable girl, as previously reported by HT. The Indian military has come a long way since it began inducting women as short-service commissioned officers in the early 1990s. Women in uniform are no longer on the fringes....