Delhi’s heroes touch the skies in a chopper

They are the most unlikely heroes one could ever meet. What they lack in body, they match it with spirit.

Updated on: Apr 10, 2012, 01:37:35 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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They are the most unlikely heroes one could ever meet. What they lack in body, they match it with spirit.

Now they are flying high, literally, on the strength of their achievements as well as a unique programme — Legacy of Heroes — launched by the US-based helicopter maker. Sikorsky.

The programme aims at encouraging everyday heroes and celebrates lives of the ordinary people they touch. Such people are taken for a ride in a Sikorsky S-92 helicopter. The programme has already been conducted in Chennai. It was Delhi’s turn on Monday.

Among many others chosen for the ride, Zakir — a hearing impaired boy — was very excited at the opportunity. A class III student, Zakir attends school in the afternoon and works in the Noida branch of an MNC food chain well past midnight. An excited Zakir, told his friends, in sign language, “I am at the top of the world.”

His co-passenger, Rahul Chauhan, 16, helped the Delhi Police in identifying the accused of 2008 Delhi bomb blasts. “I got the portrait of the accused in the bomb blast made. They were finally gunned down by police,” Chauhan told John Shuma, one of the crew members.

A national award winner for saving lives of five school kids, whose van had met with an accident on Wazirabad bridge, Uma Shankar Diwedi, 15, recalled how nobody came forward to help. “I pulled them out of the van and took them to hospital,” he said.

The youngest of them, seven-year-old Hrithik Kumar, studies in class I in Sethi Vidyalaya in Madanpur Khadar, a slum cluster in south Delhi. His father’s modest earning as a daily wager has motivated him to pursue studies.

After the 15-minute ride, when the chopper landed, all of them signed on the helicopter, that carries signature of hundreds of heroes from around the world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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