For six years, constable Sandeep Tomar heard stories of his former colleagues at the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) who went to Nepal during the 2015 earthquake as part of the Indian rescue team. Paramilitary forces personnel are sent to NDRF on seven-year deputations, and into the final year of his stint, Tomar had started to believe he would never be part of a heroic mission abroad.
Then, on February 6, as a series of earthquakes hit Turkey and Syria, leading to one of the worst natural disasters in recent years, he was asked to pack his bags.
India launched Operation Dost, aimed at assisting the Turkish authorities in the relief operations, and sent teams from NDRF and the Indian Army. Since Nepal in 2015, no NDRF team had worked overseas on a search and rescue (SAR) operation of this nature.
Tomar got his call-up within hours of the incident.
“At around 11.30am on February 6, I was teaching a group of volunteers at the NDRF campus, when I was told we need to get ready for a mission in Turkey. We were asked to bring our belongings and immediately come to the administration office. As first responders, the rule says our belongings should always be packed. Within an hour, we were outside the administration office filing online forms for our passports,” Tomar said.
In the queue outside the admin office within the NDRF’s 8th battalion campus were his colleagues Amarpal Singh, and Neeraj Kumar, among several others.
By 6 pm, a team of 51 personnel left for Hindon airport in four vehicles. Tomar was in one of them.
It was well past midnight by the time they left. Inside the special flight to Turkey, the 51 men, now “India 10 team”, tried getting word to their families that they were on their way. At 2.50am, constable Neeraj messaged his wife over WhatsApp — her number saved in his phone as “Madam”. “Main ja raha hoon. Bye. (I am leaving. Bye),” the message said.
February 7 was Tomar’s wife’s birthday. He sent her a message at 3am – “Happy Birthday my life partner. Ok Bye Bye. Apno aur bacho ka khayal rakhna. Ek baar phir se Happy Birthday (Take care of yourself and the children. Happy Birthday once again).”
As the special plane with the NDRF personnel and two canines — Honey and Rambo – left Indian shores, the rescuers had questions of their own. For instance, Neeraj wondered if they would be able to work effectively in a foreign country because of the language barrier; and driver Amarpal Singh practised in his mind how he would have to drive on the right side of the road. NDRF had taken 11 vehicles from India so they would not have to rely on Turkish authorities who were dealing with the calamity. As they landed, a third constable saw the mountains surrounding the airport; guessed the temperature was below zero degrees, and hoped the special winter jackets provided by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) would help them stay warm.
“We wore our India uniforms and got to work immediately on landing in Turkey. I can never forget the scene on our way to Gaziantep, one of the worst-hit places. It resembled scenes of the lockdown in 2020 — there were only emergency vehicles on the road. The only difference was that most buildings had been flattened,” said Tomar.
Three NDRF teams – India 10, India 11 and India 12 – moved around different disaster-hit zones, and the stories of their rescue operations started filtering back to India, and to their families The teams were famously involved in two miraculous rescues — of a six-year-old girl and an eight-year-old girl — saved almost 84 hours after the quake first hit the country.
“I can never forget the face of an elderly man who came for days asking us to find his brother trapped inside. A team from another country had already visited the site and left. The man continued to stand put outside a six-storey building. We found his brother’s body beneath a bed in the rubble. We broke the news that his brother had died. He could not even cry. His tears had dried,” said Tomar.
Neeraj said that, in Gaziantep, they found the body of a man in his 40s with his dead son in his arms. “He had held his son’s body tightly to save the boy.”
Another team found the bodies of a family of five who had all died when their house collapsed, Amarpal Singh said. “Everywhere we went, the scene was the same. Hapless relatives waiting outside the rubble and praying for a miracle.”
Most NDRF personnel who spoke to HT said they now have a story to tell about a time when they proudly represented India — it’s not just a story of a rescue mission they were a part of outside the country while their families back home prayed for their safety; but also a heartbreaking tale of people losing their loved ones, their homes, and their lives.
