Navy's chopper pilot, who rescued 26 people from rooftop

Indian Navy's helicopter pilot Captain P Rajkumar, who shot into the limelight with his daring act of winching 26 people up from a rooftop during the 2018 Kerala floods, retired from service on Thursday after 33 years of distinguished service, a Defence spokesman said here.

The officer, a native of Nilambur in Malappuram district, is highly decorated having been awarded two gallantry awards -the Shaurya Chakra for his daredevil night time rescue mission undertaken at sea off Kochi flying the Seaking helicopter during Cyclone Ockhi in December 2017;

and Nausena Medal for rescuing the lives of four scientists during a snowstorm in Antarctica as a member of the Indian scientific expeditions to Antarctica in 1990-91.

 

An Indian Navy spokesman hadtweeted the video of the daring mission immediately after it was carried out by Rajkumar in Alappuzha district during the devastating floods in August 2018.

"Yup.We can land just about anywhere.

That's a @indiannavy Seaking 42B on a narrow rooftop evacuating people in #KeralaFlood The story gets even more amazing," the Navy spokesman had tweeted on the top of the video of the act.

Rajkumar had once described it as an extremely dangerous mission conducted during an extremely bad weather condition.

There was no landing spot and he had to hover over the trees around the house and winch 26 people into the helicopter.

The officer was commissioned into the flying branch of the Navy in July 1987.

He is a flying instructor with more than 5000 hours of flying including 3000 plus hours ofinstructional flying.

He was also the first Commanding Officer of the Naval Air station at Ramnad, INS Parundu when it was commissioned in 2009.