For the first time in the history of the Indian Navy, a couple are serving as Chief Medical Officers of the Southern and Eastern Naval Commands. While Arti Sarin assumed charge as the Command Medical Officer, Kochi-based Southern Naval Command, on promotion to the rank of Surgeon Rear Admiral, her husband Surgeon Rear Admiral CS Naidu is presently the Command Medical Officer, Eastern Naval Command at Visakhapatnam.

Defence sources said this is the first time in the history of the Indian Navy both husband and wife will be serving together as Chief Medical Officers of two commands.

This was also the first time that a woman held the post of CMO in the Southern Naval Command, they said. Arti Sarin is an alumnus of Timpany School, Visakhapatnam and graduated from the prestigious Armed Forces Medical College.

She was commissioned into the Armed Forces Medical Services in December 1985. She has the distinction of having completed two post graduate degrees – MD in Radiology at AFMC Pune and in DNB Radiation Oncology from the Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai. In addition, she has trained in Gamma Knife Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, a Defence release said.

In a long naval career, she has done tenures at Naval Science & Technology Laboratories Visakhapatnam, and served in the naval hospitals at Port Blair, Visakhapatnam, Kochi and Mumbai, it said. She has been in Kochi since February 20 and has been spearheading the Southern Naval Command, Kochi’s fight against COVID-19 pandemic by overseeing the designing and developing innovative solutions and setting up quarantine facilities in the Southern Naval Command.