What should a son do whose fa­ther -a miner par ex­cel­lence, 32 years ago, in a good Samar­i­tan life-threat­en­ing act saved the lives of 65 min­ers be­yond the call of duty, yet faced prej­u­dice of col­leagues and of­fi­cial ap­a­thy? He should fight back and not rest in the half-de­liv­ery of a much-de­served lau­rel to his late fa­ther. Am­rit­sar-based Dr Sarpreet Singh is do­ing just that. What should a son do whose fa­ther’s achieve­ment has been ig­nored by the Pun­jab Gov­ern­ment, Pan­thic bod­ies and the lo­cal Am­rit­sar au­thor­i­ties? He should fight back. Dr Sarpreet Singh is do­ing just that and vows to con­tinue till his soul is sat­is­fied and his fam­ily is given due ac­knowl­edge­ment, even though posthu­mously. WSN pre­sents Dr Sarpreet Singh’s first-per­son ac­count of the re­mark­able brav­ery of his fa­ther-a miner who, in the spur of the mo­ment, made an in­no­v­a­tive Cap­sule, which saved the lives of 65 min­ers sud­denly trapped in a mine at Rani­ganj in No­vem­ber 1989.

MY FA­THER JASWANT SINGH GILL, grew up in Am­rit­sar in the com­pany of stal­wart rel­a­tives, who were ed­u­cated, posted at rep­utable of­fices, yet hum­ble, dis­ci­plined and sober. As we will soon see, he too pos­sessed the qual­i­ties of a gen­tle­man.

He stud­ied at the Khalsa School and then did his Bach­e­lors in Sci­ence from the his­toric Khalsa Col­lege, grad­u­at­ing in 1959.

A chance meet­ing with a friend in­spired him to ap­pear for the en­trance exam for the In­dian School of Mines, Dhan­bad. He was se­lected and went on to com­plete his B.Tech in Min­ing En­gi­neer­ing and passed out in 1965.

Born on 22 No­vem­ber 1939 at Sathiala in Am­rit­sar dis­trict my fa­ther Jaswant Singh Gill was the fourth child among the five chil­dren of my grand­fa­ther Daswandha Singh Gill and grand­mother Sar­darni Pree­tam Kaur Gill.

My grand­fa­ther was a se­nior clerk in the postal de­part­ment at Am­rit­sar. Though a man of mod­est means he en­sured that his five chil­dren were well ed­u­cated.

The crown­ing glory of his min­ing ca­reer came in No­vem­ber 1989 when he saved 65 coal min­ers from the flooded and col­laps­ing Ma­habir Coalmine of Rani­ganj Area in West Ben­gal in East­ern Coal­fields Ltd. a sub­sidiary of Coal In­dia Ltd. 

My un­cle Kul­want Singh Gill worked in a bank af­ter grad­u­a­tion and re­tired as a Bank Man­ager. He set­tled at Sirhind. My el­der aunt Narinder Kaur was a teacher and re­tired as the head­mistress of a gov­ern­ment school. My younger aunt Dr Ra­min­der Kaur was a pathol­o­gist and was head of the de­part­ment at Ra­jin­dra Med­ical Col­lege, Pa­tiala and then at GMC Am­rit­sar where she was di­ag­nosed with can­cer and passed away while still in ser­vice.

My un­cle Dr Har­want Singh Gill is D. Or­tho and re­tired as SMO from the PCMS.

Jaswant Singh Gill was se­lected to join the coal firm of Karam Chand Tha­par and Sons where he proved his acu­men as an able ad­min­is­tra­tor and a ca­pa­ble of­fi­cer from the very on­set of his ca­reer.

In the early sev­en­ties, when coal min­ing was na­tion­al­ized in In­dia, he chose to join Coal In­dia Ltd.

My fa­ther Jaswant Singh Gill did a his­toric res­cue mis­sion and emerged as a Hero and sav­iour of 65 pre­cious lives. 

Al­ready well known for his skills he was posted in the most dif­fi­cult ar­eas, where Miner trade unions were strong and of­ten at log­ger­heads with the man­age­ment. He showed his acu­men by han­dling all sit­u­a­tions in the finest man­ner and never com­pro­mise on the com­pa­ny’s ideals or the in­ter­ests of min­ers. 

Phys­i­cally a strong man he was al­ways a part of the res­cue teams and was ad­judged Best Zonal Cap­tain on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions and Best All In­dia Cap­tain once.

The crown­ing glory of his ca­reer came in No­vem­ber 1989 when he saved 65 coal min­ers from the flooded and col­laps­ing Ma­habir Coalmine of Rani­ganj Area in West Ben­gal in East­ern Coal­fields Ltd. a sub­sidiary of Coal In­dia Ltd. 

My fa­ther Jaswant Singh Gill did a his­toric res­cue mis­sion and emerged as a Hero and sav­iour of 65 pre­cious lives. 

In a time blast in the coal mine on 13 No­vem­ber 1989, at a depth of 330 feet from the sur­face, mil­lions of litres of wa­ter from an up­per seam gushed into the work­ing seam flood­ing it. Many work­ers man­aged to evac­u­ate the mine in the two lifts but 71 min­ers were trapped as the lift shafts were filled up to 40 feet and there was no way out for them. 

My fa­ther who was go­ing to his of­fice learnt about the ac­ci­dent on the way and im­me­di­ately de­cided to reach the ac­ci­dent site vol­un­tar­ily as it was not his area.

My fa­ther who was go­ing to his of­fice learnt about the ac­ci­dent on the way and im­me­di­ately de­cided to reach the ac­ci­dent site vol­un­tar­ily as it was not his area. On reach­ing the mine he im­me­di­ately re­al­ized the grav­ity of the sit­u­a­tion and the need for a speedy res­cue. 

By then other se­nior of­fi­cers from the head­quar­ters of the com­pany had started ar­riv­ing and plans to save the trapped min­ers was dis­cussed. 

My fa­ther Jaswant Singh Gill pro­posed a novel method of first lo­cat­ing the min­ers, drilling a new bore­hole of 22 inches di­am­e­ter, fab­ri­cat­ing a steel cap­sule that could carry one per­son at a time and use this method to res­cue the min­ers. Al­though the Chair­man of the com­pany was scep­ti­cal of his idea, he made my fa­ther the head of one of the four units that were en­gaged in var­i­ous ways to try and res­cue the trapped work­ers.

My fa­ther im­me­di­ately called for the sur­vey maps of the mine and tak­ing an ed­u­cated guess af­ter study­ing the maps thor­oughly he got a 22-inch bore drilled at the most likely high point where the min­ers may have taken shel­ter. His study was per­fect as the bore­hole con­nected at the ex­act point where the trapped min­ers had as­sem­bled. It was now learnt that of the 71 min­ers, 6 had drowned and 65 were trapped with the wa­ter level ris­ing in spite of the max­i­mum num­ber of sub­mersible pumps work­ing to pump out the wa­ter. Oxy­gen was de­plet­ing and the roof of the mine was slowly col­laps­ing and all the trapped min­ers had given up any hope of com­ing out alive. 

My fa­ther im­me­di­ately got drilling rigs hired and started the process of mak­ing the new bore­hole at the ear­li­est. The biggest chal­lenge was that the drilling bits had a max­i­mum di­am­e­ter of 8 inches. This was over­come by weld­ing new bits on the older bits then weld­ing a plate on them and again weld­ing new bits on the plate to make the bore 22 inches in di­am­e­ter. 

At the same time, my fa­ther drew plans for the Cap­sule and sent them to a fab­ri­ca­tion fac­tory nearby. Hec­tic work con­tin­ued and by the mid­night of 15th No­vem­ber, the Cap­sule was in po­si­tion on a ten-tonne winch and tri­pod with a pul­ley tied with a brand new steel rope to be low­ered into the bore­hole. 

Two res­cue per­son­nel who were briefed about the sit­u­a­tion and were to go down in the Cap­sule were then called for but both had run away. It was then that my fa­ther went up to the Chair­man of Coal In­dia Ltd who was pre­sent at the site and of­fered to go down him­self. This was strongly op­posed as the Chair­man was not will­ing to risk the life of such a se­nior of­fi­cer. Fi­nally, he re­lented and said, ‘ The man who res­cues these min­ers, his name will be writ­ten in golden let­ters in the his­tory of min­ing.’

‘ The man who res­cues these min­ers, his name will be writ­ten in golden let­ters in the his­tory of min­ing.’

Chair­man, Coal In­dia Lim­ited

At 2:30 am, on the night of 16 No­vem­ber 1989, my fa­ther en­tered the Cap­sule to go down into a cer­tain death trap. Al­most a hun­dred thou­sand peo­ple who had by now gath­ered at the site shouted slo­gans to en­cour­age him. 

Jaswant Singh Gill was hailed as the “Hero of Rani­ganj”

As the Cap­sule be­gan its de­scent, the torque in the new steel rope started re­liev­ing and made the Cap­sule spin at a high speed in a clock­wise mo­tion and then in an an­ti­clock­wise mo­tion. It was a nerve-wrack­ing en­deav­our, yet my fa­ther con­quered his fear with sheer de­ter­mi­na­tion and con­cen­tra­tion. In about 15 min­utes he reached the pit bot­tom as a man­ual winch was be­ing used to lower the Cap­sule. 

The bold man -Jaswant Singh Gill, who played with his life to res­cue oth­ers was greeted by thun­der­ous ap­plause and gar­lands all over his face. The res­cue was cov­ered by lo­cal and na­tional chan­nels and me­dia and he be­came a week-de­served hero overnight.

As soon as he opened the front hatch of the Cap­sule, he saw 65 scared faces in front of him with the fear of im­pend­ing death writ large on their faces. He caught hold of the near­est worker, put him into the Cap­sule and sig­nalled with a ham­mer he was car­ry­ing for the Cap­sule to be hoisted up.

He then turned to the re­main­ing min­ers and asked if any of them was in­jured or sick. The first 9 to­kens were given to those who had in­juries and those who had a fever. He then asked for the hi­er­ar­chy of the work­ers and gave out to­kens from the ju­nior most to the se­nior-most work­ers and told them that he would va­cate the mine last af­ter send­ing all of them out one by one. 

Af­ter 7-8 rounds, when it was ap­par­ent that the Cap­sule was func­tion­ing smoothly, the man­ual winch was re­placed with a me­chan­i­cal one and now the process be­came faster. At 8:30 am on 16 No­vem­ber, my fa­ther came back to the sur­face af­ter send­ing out all the 65 min­ers to safety. 

The Chair­man im­me­di­ately an­nounced an out of turn pro­mo­tion and a cash re­ward of Ru­pees One hun­dred thou­sand. Iron­i­cally, they never ma­te­ri­al­ized.

The bold man -Jaswant Singh Gill, who played with his life to res­cue oth­ers was greeted by thun­der­ous ap­plause and gar­lands all over his face. The res­cue was cov­ered by lo­cal and na­tional chan­nels and me­dia and he be­came a week-de­served hero overnight.

The Chair­man im­me­di­ately an­nounced an out of turn pro­mo­tion and a cash re­ward of Ru­pees One hun­dred thou­sand. Iron­i­cally, they never ma­te­ri­al­ized.

Adding in­sult to in­jury, as a ‘re­ward’ the in­hu­man com­pany heads made him the Gen­eral Man­ager of a de­funct de­part­ment which was ear­lier headed for decades by a much ju­nior of­fi­cer of the rank of Su­per­in­ten­dent. Se­nior of­fi­cers even at­tempted to take the credit for the res­cue but the print me­dia of West Ben­gal thwarted their ne­far­i­ous de­signs. 

News­pa­pers and mag­a­zines ex­tolled the ‘the hero of Rani­ganj’  and car­ried ex­ten­sive sto­ries of how 65 lives were saved af­ter be­ing trapped for 72 hours. 

In No­vem­ber 1991 he was dec­o­rated with the high­est civil­ian gal­lantry award of In­dia – Sar­vot­tam Jee­van Rak­sha Padak -High­est Life Sav­iour Medal by the then Pres­i­dent of In­dia R. Venka­tragha­van. 

For rea­sons best known to the au­thor­i­ties, in­stead of grace­fully giv­ing the award at a proper Pres­i­den­tial cer­e­mony, the award was sent to the Dis­trict Mag­is­trate of Bur­d­wan, West Ben­gal, who wanted to hold an in­vesti­ture cer­e­mony at the dis­trict level, but my fa­ther po­litely turned it down and just took the ci­ta­tion in­di­vid­u­ally.

Soon af­ter this, he was trans­ferred to Bharat Cok­ing Coal Lim­ited -BCCL, an­other sub­sidiary of Coal In­dia Ltd with its head­quar­ters in Dhan­bad. He served at three im­por­tant posts here till his re­tire­ment in March 1998 from the post of Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor (Safety and Res­cue).

Upon re­tire­ment, he re­turned to his home­town Am­rit­sar and led a sim­ple life keep­ing him­self busy with Ro­tary Club ac­tiv­i­ties and con­struct­ing a ho­tel for my younger brother. 

Be­ing a quiet hum­ble per­son, de­spite his gi­gan­tic achieve­ment in sav­ing scores of lives, his act of un­par­al­leled brav­ery stayed hid­den.

I then took it upon my­self to make peo­ple aware of his out­stand­ing feat which led to him be­ing in­vited to ad­dress meets to share his act of val­our, mak­ing him a known fig­ure in the holy city of Am­rit­sar. 23 years af­ter his dar­ing act, his for­mer em­ploy­ers Coal In­dia Lim­ited awarded him with the Life­time Achieve­ment Award. 

Be­sides Coal In­dia Lim­ited -CIL,  he has also re­ceived life­time achieve­ment awards from the In­sti­tute of En­gi­neers ( Pun­jab & Chandi­garh) and the In­dian School of Mines Alumni As­so­ci­a­tion, Delhi Chap­ter.

It is a mat­ter of pride for the Sikh com­mu­nity, In­di­ans at large, and the min­ing fra­ter­nity in par­tic­u­lar that all over In­dia, the min­ing fra­ter­nity ob­serves 16 No­vem­ber as Res­cue Day.

It is a mat­ter of pride for the Sikh com­mu­nity, In­di­ans at large, and the min­ing fra­ter­nity in par­tic­u­lar that all over In­dia, the min­ing fra­ter­nity ob­serves 16 No­vem­ber as Res­cue Day.

Fol­low­ing the foot­steps of his sib­lings, even af­ter re­tire­ment, he did not lead a laid back life. He be­came the Pres­i­dent of the Ro­tary Club of Am­rit­sar and vis­it­ing Pro­fes­sor (Min­ing) at Dr B R Ambed­kar Na­tional In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy, Ja­land­har.

Am­rit­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion nom­i­nated him as a life­time mem­ber of the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee of the city.

A true Sikh -a learner through­out life, my fa­ther Jaswant Singh Gill once again joined his alma mater Khalsa Col­lege of Law as a reg­u­lar law stu­dent at the ripe age of 78 years. Un­for­tu­nately, he passed away while in the sec­ond year of his stud­ies.

In 2017 he was ap­proached by Tinu De­sai from Mum­bai, who had di­rected the Bol­ly­wood movie Rus­tom with ac­tor Ak­shay Ku­mar and of­fered to make a Hindi movie on the res­cue. Un­for­tu­nately, my fa­ther passed away on 26 No­vem­ber 2019, fol­low­ing a mas­sive car­diac ar­rest. 

Jaswant Singh Gill’s life story will be told in its full glory for pos­ter­ity soon and even though posthu­mously, jus­tice will have to be done.

Dr Sarpreet Singh Gill is the el­dest son of Late En­gi­neer Jaswant Singh Gill. A doc­tor by pro­fes­sion, he is a Car­di­ol­o­gist. He is the Med­ical Di­rec­tor of Ma­habir Hos­pi­tal, Am­rit­sar.