Ashok Chakra Awardee

ASHOK CHAKRA AWARD     TO YOUNG ARMY DOCTOR

Major Laishram Jyotin Singh, an unarmed army doctor who killed a suicide bomber in Kabul last year, will be posthumously awarded the country's highest peacetime gallantry award, Ashok Chakra, by President Pratibha Patil on Republic Day.

On the morning of February 16, 2010, suicide attackers stormed an Indian residential complex in the heart of the Afghan capital, housing mostly army officials. One of the terrorists blew himself up at the gates of the complex, killing three guards, as others made their way inside. The attackers fired indiscriminately and hurled grenades, going from one room to the other. Sixteen people were killed in the two-hour assault. The terrorists lobbed a grenade on a room in which five unarmed officers had taken shelter. The fire on the roof engulfed an adjacent bathroom where five more officers had taken refuge.

On hearing their shouts, the 37-year-old major crawled out of the debris and charged at one of the suicide bombers and pinned him to the floor, preventing the attacker from reaching his colleagues. Unable to escape from Major Singh's grip, the attacker panicked and detonated his explosive-laden vest killing himself the officer who had arrived there just three days back. Singh, a native of Manipur, was commissioned into