The 18-year-old local hero Suryakumar who single-handedly nabbed a chain snatcher in Anna Nagar, Chennai, in April 2018 was awarded the Anna medal for gallantry on Republic Day by Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami.
The award comes with a certificate, prize money of Rs 1 lakh and a medal worth Rs 5,000. It could be recalled when News Today featured him in our paper last April, we reported that Surya was learning to become an AC mechanic and one day, wanted to stand on his own feet.
Suriya had expressed the same to Police Commissioner AK Viswanathan who got him a job with the TVS Company as a part of their air-conditioner maintenance team in July.
Surya lives a small house behind the Thirumangalam overhead water tank. His father Narayanan is a tailor and his mother, a daily wage worker. Surya’s brave act which was the talk of the town happened on 17 April 2018. Surya, who is just 5 feet 3 inches in height and weighs under 50 kgs, chased down a chain snatcher much older and heftier than him, pinned him to the ground and recovered a gold chain that he stole from Dr Amudha, a gynecologist in D Block, Anna Nagar.