Brave ones, with a lot of heart

Seema Kaul

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 17

Receiving fake Aadhaar cards within minutes of sending their photographs made teenagers Shivani Gond and Tejasweeta Pradhan sit up.

They knew at once they were dealing with no “ordinary” person. These plucky schoolgirls from Darjeeling eventually tracked down a “missing” Nepalese woman who turned out to be a part of a human trafficking ring. 

They will receive the Geeta Chopra National Bravery Award for helping the police arrest three persons — including the kingpin of the trafficking racket — last year. 

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Members of the school Students Against Trafficking Club (SATC), they became suspicious when studying the Facebook profile of the Nepalese woman. “We contacted her. We told her we wanted to flee home to work for her. The first question she asked us was how old we were,” recalls Shivani. 

Shivani and Tejasweeta then agreed to meet their “employers” at Panitanki village in Darjeeling district of West Bengal. They were told to reach a restaurant. A young girl came to pick them up and take them to Delhi. She was nabbed by the police within minutes.

She gave information about another woman at the New Jalpaiguri railway station, who too was nabbed. Her interrogation led to the arrest of Gagan Verma, the kingpin, from Gurgaon.

Another braveheart, 15-year-old Sumit Mamgain of Dehradun, will receive the Sanjay Chopra National Award for rescuing his cousin from the jaws of a leopard. Sumit caught the beast’s tail and attacked him with a sickle. 

Praful Sharma, 11, won a bravery award for saving his school bus from rolling into a ditch. “There were 12 of us. I was playing a videogame when some boys changed the gear to neutral. I hastened to apply the brakes. The driver had just got off for tea,” says Praful. The boys were from Barchhwar village in Mandi, Himachal Pradesh.

The Indian Council for Child Welfare today held a function to honour the gritty children.