How woman pilot saved bleeding jawan at Ground Zero Abujmarh

Nagpur: The daredevilry of a woman helicopter pilot, Captain Reena Varughese, proved to be a turning point in the eight-hour gun battle and siege of the booby-trapped Maoist headquarters of Abujmarh on Monday. As a wounded C-60 commando lay bleeding for three hours in the treacherous terrain after taking three bullets in the lower portion of his body, Captain Varughese responded to an SOS call from ground zero and flew her 13-seater Dauphin-N Pawan Hans helicopter with her crew from Gadchiroli into the heartland of People's Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA), traversing 100km or 52nautical miles in 35 minutes.
As the clock ticked for the wounded commando, Captain Varughese navigated the chopper in most life-threatening circumstances, lowering the whirring copter as close to the ground as possible amidst flying bullets and raining rockets from entrenched guerrillas. The captain and her crew knew it was impossible to land on rocky, undulating forested terrain. Putting her co-pilot in charge, she jumped off the cockpit as the copter hovered just 11feet above the ground. Swirling dust and deafening sound of rotor blades made the chopper a sitting duck for Maoists, who are known to possess a fleet of unmanned drones to counter airborne raids.
Nobody, not even the woman captain can forget the 2009 ambush, when a chopper ferrying senior police and polling officials was shot down by PLGA fighters in the fringes of Abujmarh in Laheri during election duty. But a life had to be saved, and risks had to be taken.
Drawing from her experience in rescue and evacuation in high-risk zones, including Maoist-hit areas of Jagdalpur, Sukma and Chintagufa in Chhattisgarh, Captain Reena Varughese demonstrated an uncanny ability in taking up the challenge head-on. While her co-pilot kept the chopper steady mid-air, Varughese managed to swiftly lift the injured commando into the helicopter with help from commandos. The injured jawan was flown to Gadchiroli within 30 minutes, from where he was flown to Nagpur, where his condition was stable, till reports last came in.
With 15 years of flying experience, this former B Tech in Aeronautical Engineering-turned-pilot was also part of Pawan Hans operation to evacuate Covid-19 patients from Lakshadweep Islands to Kochi.