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Kovai man rides 5,500 km to create awareness on Child Sexual Abuse and Clean India
With a placard saying ‘Stop Child Abuse’ affixed to the handlebar, 27-year-old software engineer L Dhandapani of Rathinapuri in the city rode his 150 cc bike from Kashmir to Kanniyakumari, covering 5,500 km in eight days, to create awareness to campaign against ‘Child Sexual Abuse’ and for promoting ‘Clean India’.
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migrator
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Chennai
After sending his bike to Srinagar early this month, Dhandapani began his journey from Srinagar on August 15 and reached Kanniyakumari on August 22. He then went on a short trip to Tiruchendur, Rameswaram and Dhanushkodi before reaching Coimbatore on Thursday evening where he was received and appreciated by IG A Pari.
His ride at Kashmir was flagged off by a few jawans. “I set off with 2,000 pamphlets printed back to back in Hindi and English with messages on child sexual abuse and putting an end to it. I arranged my lodging on the go. It cost me about Rs 60,000 to complete the ride,” he said.
Distributing pamphlets and clearing garbage, especially non-degradable wastes, at a few places, he covered Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, New Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. “The most number of child sexual abuse cases is reported in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. So I distributed a major share of the pamphlets there,” he added. “Though I had prepared for the trip for a long time it was a real learning experience,” he noted.
In the recent past, he had pedalled from Coimbatore to Chennai covering 530 km in two days, followed by a Coimbatore-Bengaluru-Coimbatore trip covering more than 700 km in two days. If not for Kousik Rajendran, the director of the firm in which I work, these trips would not have been a success, he said.
Bicycle expedition planned from October 2
L Dhandapani, who rode 5,500 km to create awareness against child sexual abuse, said that it was only a prelude to his 4,000-km-long bicycle ride from Kashmir to Kanniyakumari. He has planned to begin his expedition from October 2.
“Two jawans have set a record of covering this distance in 15 days and 17 hours. I want to break this and enter the Limca Book of Records by finishing the trip in 15 days. I have planned to distribute close to 5,000 pamphlets against child sexual in each State,” he said.
He also plans to take pamphlets in respective languages of the States that he will be passing through. He said that many organisations have come forward to sponsor this trip in which he will be accompanied by his friends P Sathish and M Naresh Kumar.
While the North to South (Kashmir to Kanniyakumari) will be his longest bicycling experience, he also plans to cover the East to West (Arunachal Pradesh to Gujarat) stretch on his bike and then on his bicycle before the end of this year. “I want to be the first cyclist who would cover the length and breadth of the country on a bicycle. My long term goal is to pedal across continents,” he said.
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