In recognition of the feat of Six State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) personnel of rescuing a mountaineer from a 50- feet deep gorge near the high altitude Surale glacier in Uttarkashi district, SDRF has sent a proposal to the state police headquarters for sending their names for the Prime Minister’s Police Medal for life Saving.
Notably, to enhance the skills of the police personnel to conduct search, rescue and relief operation at the higher reaches of the Himalayan region in cases of emergency, a 17- member SDRF mountaineering team led by deputy commandant Navneet Singh Bhullar had departed for Satopanth peak (23263 feet). Earlier, the state DGP MA Ganapathy had flagged off the team in Dehradun on May 18. On June 5, during the mountaineering campaign at Satopanth (between advance base camp (ABC) and Camp-1), a mountaineer Prayang Chaudhary, who was a member mountaineering expedition team, had fallen into a 50 feet gorge at Surale glacier at Kairawas. On being informed of the mishap, the SDRF team, equipped with modern high mountaineering rescue equipments, had plunged into a rescue operation and risking their lives, they had managed to bring Chaudhary to a safer place and given him medical aids. The six SDRF personnel who did the commendable rescue work are sub-inspector Satish Kumar Sharma, Constable Suryakant Uniyal, Firemen Ravi Chauhan and Praveen Singh, constables Virendra Prasad Kala and Sushil Kumar.
IG SDRF Sanjay Gunjiyal said on Wednesday that the six SDRF personnel have done a commendable work and they deserve to get Prime Minister’s Police Medal for life Saving. “We would send the proposal to DGP and the DGP would send it to the Centre,” he added.