Reasi, June 7 -- As Prime Minister Narendra Modi dedicated a prestigious railway project connecting Kashmir to the rest of the country on Friday, fulfilling Maharaja Pratap Singh's century-old dream, the Indian Railways remembered the pivotal role of the armed forces' helicopters in ferrying men and machines to the remote and cut-off region to script history.
The use of helicopters proved to be a game changer, not only in building more than 215 kilometres of approach roads through mountainous terrain, linking around 70 remote villages, but also in paving the way for human resource deployment and the construction of three engineering marvels - the world's highest railway bridge, the country's biggest cable-stayed bridge and the longest tran...