Prez Murmu awards 6 CRPF personnel, including 4 posthumously, for gallantry

New Delhi: Six CRPF personnel, including four posthumous, were decorated with military gallantry medals by President Droupadi Murmu during a defence investiture ceremony held here on Friday.

The family members of Inspector Dilip Kumar Das, Head Constable Raj Kumar Yadav and Constables Bablu Rabha and Shambhu Roy received Kirti Chakras (posthumous) from Murmu. They were recognised for displaying gallant action during an anti-Naxal operation in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district on April 3, 2021.

Twenty-two security personnel, including eight from the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), were killed in action during this gunbattle, followed by a Naxal ambush that went on for six hours.

The president awarded Kirti Chakras to the next of kin of these personnel who displayed extraordinary bravery and inflicted heavy casualties on the Maoists, a force spokesperson said quoting their gallantry citations.

Murmu also awarded Shaurya Chakras to two other personnel of the country’s largest paramilitary force for showing gallantry during an anti-Naxal operation and a counter-terrorist action in Jammu and Kashmir.

Assistant Commandant Bibhor Kumar Singh was awarded the military medal for displaying “exceptional” bravery and continuing to lead his troops despite losing his left leg to an improvised explosive device (IED) blast triggered by the Naxals in the Chakrabandha forest of the Aurangabad district in Bihar on February 25, 2022.

Singh, a commando of the CRPF’s CoBRA battalion, could only be evacuated the next day for treatment by a helicopter, during which he lost a lot of blood.

Constable Gamit Mukesh Kumar was also awarded the Shaurya Chakra for killing a terrorist in a hand-to-hand combat and subsequent exchange of gunfire during a counter-terrorist operation in Jammu and Kashmir’s Srinagar on December 19, 2021.

Kumar was a member of the specialised Kashmir valley-based quick action team (QAT) of the CRPF that has many killings of terrorists and successful operations to its credit.