A 16-member team of border guarding force ITBP is among those who have been decorated with the first 'Home Minister's Special Operation Medal' for undertaking a daring operation to retrieve bodies of seven mountaineers from the higher reaches of Uttarakhand few months back.
The Union Home Ministry on Thursday issued an order declaring the names of the awardees.
The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) force operation pertains to its team bringing down on July 3 bodies of seven mountaineers, including an Indian, who were killed on their way to the 7,434-metre-high Nanda Devi East Peak in May.
"The medal has been given to the force personnel for exhibiting raw courage and professionalism of the highest order," ITBP spokesperson Vivek Kumar Pandey said.
The medal was instituted last year by the Union Home Ministry and as per its scheme, it will be awarded to the winners on the occasion of Independence day in August.
Teams of Delhi Police (5 members) and Odisha Police (25) have also been awarded the medal along with the ITBP.
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The ITBP team on ground was led by second-in-command rank officer Ratan Singh Sonal and it operated under the command of Deputy Inspector General (DIG) A P S Nimbadia, who camped in Pithoragarh.
The operation was called "one of the most difficult" in the world as it involved retrieval of bodies from an altitude of 19,000 feet and had a typical icy terrain.
The ill-fated climbers' team included seven nationals from the UK, Australia and the US, besides a liaison officer from the Indian Mountaineering Foundation.
The body of the team leader and noted British mountaineer Martin Moran was not found.
The force, that is primarily tasked to guard the 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China, had launched 'Operation Daredevil' to retrieve the bodies which were first spotted by an IAF chopper in a bowl-shaped region below the peak.
Climbers of the mountain-warfare trained force clocked 500 hours, spanning over 15 days, to bring back the mortal remains of the seven climbers.
Other members of the ITBP team included: Deputy Commandant Anoop Negi, Inspector Hemant Goswami, Head Constables Devendra Singh, Kalam Singh and Bhagyashali Meena, Constables Kapil Dev, Pradeep Panwar, Bharat Lal, Jaiprakash Singh, Sanjay Singh, Surendra Singh, Dheerendra Pratap, Devendra Singh and Manjeet Singh.