Meet the three rescuers of two-year-old Vandana

HEROIC TRIO: Pappu Kasuwa, Major Nitin and Kaptan Singh were directly involved in the rescue.

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Tehra: Pappu Kasuwa is finally home and happy. He is one of the three men who went down a tunnel to save two-year-old Vandana.

The 30-year-old farmer from the neighboring village of Kanchanpur says he did it as she reminded him of his two-year-old child.

“I was very happy, I took the girl out and held her close. Then the army officer took her from me. But I was very happy,” said Pappu.

For Major Nitin, who took Vandana from Pappu, this operation was a first. Going down in a crane and crawling through the tunnel with low oxygen was never an easy task, but the brave soldier never lost heart.

"I went down and took her out,” he stated, simply.

“Once we reached the child, then it was to take her out safely because she was half buried in mud and half out. We had to be very careful because she was there since such a long time,” he explained.

Kaptan Singh is the third man in the heroic trio. He's the man who crawled on his belly inside the tunnel, dug out the sand with his bare hands and plucked the child from the tunnel.

“There were many problems while digging, sometimes mud, sometimes fine sand. After eight or nine hours of digging I held Vandana in my arms,” said Singh.

The three men to whom Vandana owes her life are all strangers to her as are most of the other rescue workers who helped dig the tunnel and kept medical and food supplies going.

Clearly, it is in situations like this that humanity triumphs over everything else.