Arunima Sinha
Thrown from a moving train and left on the tracks, she climbed Everest on a prosthetic leg two years later
Arunima Sinha grew up in Ambedkar Nagar in Uttar Pradesh, the daughter of an army engineer who died when she was small. She was a good athlete, playing volleyball and football at national level, and in April 2011 was travelling by train to Delhi to sit an exam for a job with the paramilitary police.
A group of men tried to snatch her gold chain. When she fought them off they threw her out of the moving carriage. She landed on the parallel track and a train ran over her left leg. She lay there through the night, unable to move, with several more trains passing, before villagers found her in the morning. Her leg was amputated below the knee at a local hospital; she has said it was done without proper anaesthetic. A rod was fitted in her other leg.
Lying in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi, reading newspaper stories that questioned her account, she decided she would climb Everest. She contacted Bachendri Pal, the first Indian woman to reach the summit, who agreed to train her. Eighteen months of work followed at the Tata Steel Adventure Foundation, learning to climb on a prosthetic limb that rubbed her stump raw.
On 21 May 2013 she reached the summit of Everest, the first female amputee to do so, running short of oxygen on the descent. She has since climbed the highest peaks on all seven continents, was awarded the Padma Shri in 2015, and runs a sports academy for disabled children.