Amputee CRPF officer to run marathon on blades

An amputee CRPF officer, awarded the 'Shaurya Chakra' for a daring operation against Naxals in 2011, is going to be the first blade runner from security forces combating India's internal conflicts to run a marathon scheduled in the national capital later this month.

The young officer, R K Singh, has beaten many odds in his relatively small service of 11 years in the country's largest paramilitary force.

Singh was put into a low medical category and was denied promotion last year because of the amputation of his left leg after he led his troops in an anti-Naxal ambush in Jharkhand's Lohardaga where he encountered blasts triggered by 192 Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).

The officer, to set the example of being a true soldier, will don a set of blades which are being imported from the United States for him to undertake the first-ever 'Run for Unity' half-marathon hosted by CRPF to honour its martyrs on October 12 in the national capital region.

"I just thought why I should not be participating? Nothing stops me...I have been trained under the best schools of the SPG and NSG. I have been an operations man all my life. Hence, I decided that despite not having a leg I will run the half-marathon for whatever distance I can," Singh told PTI when he was asked about his motivation to participate in this event.

Cricket star Sachin Tendulkar is expected to flag off the event in the presence of other sports achievers like boxer MC Mary Kom and Virendra Sehwag.

The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), on its part, has quickly sanctioned a loan of about Rs 2.5 lakh for the blades which Singh would be using.

"He is too upright an officer to take the sum as a charity amount. He asked for a loan to procure these blades from the US and we just helped him," a senior CRPF officer said.
CRPF Director General Dilip Trivedi said Singh's promotion has recently been cleared by the Union Home Ministry and he has been posted in the headquarter operations unit of the force in Delhi as a Deputy Commandant now. 

Singh, who hails from Uttar Pradesh's Firozabad, has largely been deployed in the anti-Maoist operations theatre out of his own choice.

"I am also motivating some other colleagues of mine to participate in this marathon and show their grit despite their disabilities which they got during operational tasks," Singh, who joined the CRPF as an Assistant Commandant, said.

Credited in the paramilitary force as the man who averted another 'Dantewada type' ambush on CRPF in which 75 personnel were killed in 2010, Singh has been awarded the military medal (Shaurya Chakra) for "great determination, extraordinary courage and conspicuous bravery despite being grievously injured" during the operation where Naxals blew a total of 192 landmines simultaneously on May 3, 2011 leading to the killing of 11 policemen.

The lethality of the encounter can be gauged from the fact that apart from claiming the lives of 11 security force personnel (six CRPF and five Jharkhand Police), 44 security personnel were injured, many of them grievously.

The young officer is only the second from security or armed forces to have taken this sporting mantle in light of his special abilities.

The other such brave heart is an Army Major who was amputated after an encounter.
The half-marathon, with 6,500 registrations till now, is being organised to commemorate 75 years of the raising of the paramilitary this year.

The CRPF, raised in 1939, also renders a host of internal security tasks like countering insurgency in the northeast and combating militancy in Jammu and Kashmir.

A total of Rs 19.10 lakh in prize money will be given to the winners of the half-marathon.
The winners, in both men and women's category, will get Rs 3 lakh each, while those finishing second and third will be awarded with Rs 2 and 1 lakh respectively.Those who will rank 4-10 after the run will get a prize money ranging from Rs 25,000 to Rs 80,000.

The marathon will be flagged off from Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium here while the CRPF proposes to hold symbolic runs on the same day at all its major bases across the country.

In order to pay tribute to its martyrs, the CRPF has marked the trophies (of this half-marathon) in the names of its 'Shaheed' personnel.

The force has also mandated that all future references for slain personnel will be made by using the prefix of 'Shaheed'.