Kashmir braveheart who rescued flood victims wins Rs 25 lakh on KBC

On September 6, Raja was busy in a musical show on the night when one of his band members received a call from his home that water has started entering into his house. All of the sudden they packed their instruments and reached the house of Zubair – a band members – in Shaheedgunj in Srinagar and rescued his family.

At 3.30 am on the same night, they heard another sad news – this time from the family of another band member Amir Ahmad who had been shifted to a hospital after he was electrocuted. They rushed to the hospital and spent the night there.

A day later as the city was deluged, Raja again rushed to Shaheedgunj. Raja, his friends and local police officer started the first rescue operation in the area. And while he was rescuing the trapped people in the area, he receive another call – this time from his own family informing him that waters had entered into their two storey house. He immediately went to home, rescued his family and kept them in the nearby mosque. He rushed back the Shaheedgunj to join the rescue operation.

Till September 12, Raja who rescued thousands of people including a Pakistani family which had come to visit their relatives in Srinagar. “It was a tough job. Even as we rescued trapped people, we helped them take out some important belongings from their houses,” he said.

After Raja’s brave efforts appeared in the local newspapers, he received a call from Sony television to enquire about his rescue efforts during the floods. “I was not expecting the call from the channel,” he said. “They asked me about my family and how I saved people during the flood. Perhaps they came to know about me through the newspapers.”

The a crew from Sony arrived in Srinagar to talk to people about Raja’s bravery effort in the floods. “After our crew visited valley to shoot the post flood devastation, we heard that Raja rescued more than 500 people in the floods and also saw his stories that appeared in the newspapers,” an official from the Sony Television said. “The programme is a segment of KBC where we select people who have done extraordinary in their lives.”

For Raja wining the KBC means more than Rs 25 lakh. “When I would watch the programme, sometimes it would come to mind that if I ever could play the game,” he said. “But then I would realize that I am a common man with no financial background and I would get out of my dream world.”

Today he is a proud Kashmiri. “I have made my parents proud and also Kashmir youth,” he said. “I will distribute this money to the flood affected victims in Kashmir.”

When the show was telecast on Thursday evening, he turned everyone emotional. And even Amitabh Bachan was all praise for Raja. “He appreciated me after the programme,” he said. “He has also written about me in the twitter and on the blog. It means a lot to me.”

Raja belongs to a poor family. For more than twenty years, his family lived in a shed on the banks of Dal Lake. He worked as a mechanic for four years and then through his saving he bought an auto rickshaw. He soon sold the auto to finance his sister’s marriage. “I then choose music as my profession and raised my own music band,” he said. “But the recent floods washed away my equipments and I now feel everything has been lost.”