Displaying exemplary sportsman spirit, a footballer in a Madhya Pradesh town rescued two children from the debris of a collapsed building despite being certain that he would not escape death in the pr
Displaying exemplary sportsman spirit, a footballer in a Madhya Pradesh town rescued two children from the debris of a collapsed building despite being certain that he would not escape death in the process.
Bablu Martin (34), resident of Maihar in Satna district, got into the collapsed structure after wading through boulders the moment a three-storey building came crashing in front of him on Saturday.
“Bablu ran inside the collapsed house the moment he heard the sound of crashing. He tried to hold some falling columns to help a 12-year-old girl and her 9-year-old brother, who were inside the house, to escape,” Naresh Chawla, a member of the rescue team sent to spot, told this newspaper on Sunday, adding, “He did not bother for his life even as the crumbling walls of the house started falling on him. By the time, he rescued the two children his entire body below the neck was completely under the debris.”
He literally snatched the two children from jaws of death, Mr Chawla said.
“A downpour also flooded the collapsed structure, making merely his head visible. This all happened in a matter of a few minutes,” he said.
It took the rescue team almost four hours to pull him out of the debris. He was grievously injured and died on way to the hospital in Katni.
Bablu, who represented Madhya Pradesh in national football tournament half-a-decade ago, was running a sports academy in the town to train underprivileged children for free.
“He was a true sportsman and he proved it by sacrificing his life to save lives of two children,” M. Martin, one of cousins, said.
