Using a shovel and his bare hands, former soldier Bishal Thapa pulled out two of his neighbours, including a speech-impaired man, who were sinking into the sludge that accompanied the boulders in pitch darkness.
Doctor Molla Irfan Hossain ziplined across a raging river to reach stranded villagers after a bridge had been washed away and brought them to safety on a speedboat. Among those rescued were a newborn who had fallen from his mother’s arms into the floodwater and a pregnant woman.
Tales of unwavering courage and determination in the face of extreme danger are emerging from the devastated landscape of north Bengal after the rain-triggered landslides and floods that killed at least 33 people.
In Mirik, former Gorkha Rifles jawan Bishal Thapa received a desperate call for help from his neighbour and friend Bibek Chhetri around 2.45am on Sunday. Chhetri, a resident of Ward 3 of Mirik municipality, was trapped waist-deep in mud.
“Luckily, he could reach the phone in his left pocket and somehow managed to call me,” said 42-year-old Thapa.
The former soldier picked up a shovel and bolted towards Chhetri’s house. “On my
way to his house, I knocked at other neighbours’ doors as I knew that I could do precious little alone.”
When Thapa reached Chhetri’s home, he was stunned at the sight that greeted him. The house had nearly been reduced to rubble, and two women of the family were lying unconscious on the ground, Thapa recalled on Tuesday. “I waded through the sludge to reach the two women and took them to a neighbour’s house,” Thapa said.
When he entered the house, he found Chhetri’s speech-impaired elder brother Raj trapped in the mud near the entrance and struggling to keep his head above it.
“I could hear Bibek’s cries for help from inside, but I knew I could not leave his brother, who was using sign language to ask for help. I started digging the mud around Raj to ensure that he could breathe and I could pull him out,” Thapa said. “Raj would have been buried alive had I been 15 minutes late.”
Thapa soon spotted flickering lights from mobile phones approaching the house.
“I knew help had arrived, and I rushed inside to rescue Bibek,” he said.
With the help of villagers, Thapa managed to bring out Chhetri, but Raj was still stuck.
“Rescuing Raj was difficult because he was trapped under wooden planks as well. It took us almost three hours to bring him to safety,” Thapa added.
At Nagrakata in Jalpaiguri district, block medical officer of health Hossain and his three-member team risked their lives to rescue villagers marooned by floodwaters on Sunday.
A disaster-affected woman with her child at a relief camp after last week's devastating landslides and floods, in Darjeeling district, West Bengal, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025. PTI
Hossain and his team set off for Khayerkata and Bamandanga Tondu villages, located 12km from the Nagrakata Block Hospital, in the morning after receiving distress calls from villagers cut off by the Gathia river in spate.
Their mission was hindered by the Tanatani bridge, which had been washed away by the river.
The National Disaster Response Force arrived and quickly set up a zipline over the river. Hossain and his team ziplined over the swollen river to reach the other side, where a collapsed culvert forced them to take a circuitous and treacherous route before they could reach the marooned settlements.
“The people were overjoyed to see us,” Hossain recalled on Tuesday. “They had lost hope. Many shared stories of how they scrambled to reach higher ground to save their lives. A two-month-old baby fell into the floodwaters from his mother’s arms and was rescued immediately,” he said.
The team set up a health camp and distributed baby food and dry rations that they had carried. Later, speedboats arrived to take the stranded villagers to safety.