ISP Delhi Bureau
He is known as the Helmet Man of India. He has distributed over 58,000 helmets free of cost to bike riders on road and he does this as a matter of his social commitment. Raghvendra Kumar took this major decision of his life to dedicate his life to saving lives on road after he lost a friend in an accident. He left his job and sold all his assets to use the money to buy helmets for people he finds riding without helmets on the road.
In 2014, Raghvendra lost his close friend Krishan Kumar Thakur in a road accident in Greater Noida. He was helmetless when he met with an accident with his two-wheeler. Raghvendra couldn’t get over the pain of his loss and since that day he decided to give a helmet to any person who is riding a two-wheeler without a helmet.
Raghvendra became a social media rage when a young man riding his two-wheeler at a speed exceeding 100 Km/h on the Agra-Lucknow expressway without a helmet was intercepted by him. The visual shows a car with a message on its rear windshield reading “yamraj ne bheja hain bachaane ke liye, upar jagha nahi jaane ke liye” intercepts him. The message meant the “God of Death has sent me to say there is no room up there,” The car’s driver offers the bike rider a new helmet and urges him to wear it for his safety before continuing his journey. That is how Raghvendra operates and he is popular in the new media as a saviour angel for many.
The Helmet Man of India has saved around 30 people from fatal accidents till now in the last 10 years. A man from Indore whom Raghvendra had offered a helmet to when spotted riding a two-wheeler without a helmet in Delhi, survived a road accident in Kota just a week later. The helmet saved the rider’s life and he wrote back to Raghvendra thanking him for saving his life. For Raghvendra’s road safety endeavour, even Union minister Nitin Gadkari has lauded and praised him.
He has been doing this social service consistently for the last 9 years without a break. But, things seem tough for Raghvendra Kumar now. He is finding it difficult to sustain this safety campaign. In order to provide helmets for riders who were not wearing them, he decided to sell his apartment in Greater Noida and take out a loan using his wife’s jewellery as collateral. But, with his resources fast squeezing up, Kumar is now thinking of relocating to his native place in Bihar and continuing his work in his village as his funds may allow to do work only in a limited way.
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