Triple amputee beats odds to become a software engineer in Ghaziabad

GHAZIABAD: In an instant, as he played cricket with his friends, the surge of electricity from a low-slung 11,000 volt transmission line near his home in Indirapuram, turned 14-year-old Shivranshu Chhuneja's life into a nightmare. At the hospital, both his legs and an arm had to be amputated to save him. He lost some control on even the fingers of his surviving right hand from nerve damage.He also suffered burn injuries in other parts of his body.
Today, Shivranshu is a software developer employed by the Noida branch of a French IT firm, after receiving a bachelor's degree in computer applications, via correspondence, from Sikkim Manipal University. This, after he not only fought back to survive the ghastly incident, but went on to complete his schooling from an open school in Noida.
Shivranshu says he was a computer geek from his school days. He operates a computer using those fingers and the thumb in his right hand in which doctors managed to restore some movement and sensation through surgery. He says he can type 30 words per minute with this hand.
It all began unfolding on June 20, 2006, when the Class IX student was playing cricket with neighbours in the local park. According to Shivranshu's father Vijay Kumar Chhuneja, a modest building contractor, "One of his friends hit the ball over the boundary wall. Shivranshu went to retrieve it, but touched the low-slung power cable as he climbed the boundary wall. His body convulsed as parts of his body were singed in small fires that erupted wherever he touched the cable. Finally, using sticks and lathis, we brought him down and rushed him to hospital."
At the hospital, doctors had to remove both legs under the knees and parts of his left arm, as gangrene had set in. Back home, Shivranshu's father gifted him a laptop "which kept the computer geek in him occupied. His fingers were only partially operational. But that did not bother him. He could keep in touch with friends on the internet." Financial help poured in from good Samaritans after this paper carried his story in late 2006. The owner of an advertising agency, who does not wish to be named, imported electronically-operated prostheses for his legs and right hand from Germany. That is what he moves on and works with these days.