DEHRADUN: Wednesday: 5 pm.

Someone in the crowd, waiting like the others around him for the 41 men trapped in the Silkyara tunnel to come out, said, “Bas, ho gaya.

Ab bahar niklenge humare log (It’s done.

Our friends are coming out).” A second person chimed in and said, “Very good, very good.” Soon, there was a wave of celebrations.

Wednesday: 6 pm.The joy turned out to be premature.

The men were still stuck inside.An hour later, at about 7 pm, personnel from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were told the drilling machine had hit metal.

It couldn’t plough through it to reach the workers stranded barely meters away.

That’s when one of the most dramatic parts of the 13-day long rescue operation was mounted.

The NDRF men would have to squeeze into a 3 ft-wide pipe, one by one, gas cutter in hand, to neutralise the obstruction.There was will and courage, of course, but the rescuers hadn’t accounted for a few things — deadly backdraft that could singe them, working in such extremely high temperatures where breathing itself was difficult, and the cramped space that compromised movement and manoeuvre.Wednesday: 10 pm.

Despite getting rapidly dehydrated due to flames from the gas-cutting machine in the tiny channel, three NDRF constables kept at it.

Each man went in for 10 minutes, did some quick jousting with the metal blockage, scraped and cleaned the floor, and rushed out.

That’s all they could take.

But it wasn’t enough.

The mesh was made of iron rods 32 mm-wide.

NDRF isn’t trained for such things.Thursday: 1 am.

It was clear the NDRF constables would need help.

Manually cutting and removing the unforeseen debris, tough iron bars, had proved more difficult than imagined.

Technicians of Delhi-based private company Trenchless Engineering Services, which also owns the American auger machine, had to be called in.Applauded for their bravery and technical skills, specialists Praveen and Balvinder said it was their most difficult operation and the first of its kind in their career.Thursday: 1.30 am: Two professional gas cutting specialists, Praveen Yadav from Uttar Pradesh and Balvinder Singh from Bihar, reached the tunnel and made another attempt.

Slightly over two hours later, they came out and said the passage had been cleared.

It was almost 4 am by then.Shambhu Mishra, a member of the private firm’s technical team, said, “Praveen and Balvinder crawled inside the 45m-long escape passage with the support of the NDRF team.

They were provided special masks and oxygen cylinders.

They stayed inside the pipes for a long time, exiting only after they’d done their job with the gas-cutter.

Praveen needed some medical attention after that.

But he’s fine now.”A senior NDRF officer told TOI: “We could only send one person at a time.

Everyone here is trying their best — all the teams involved in the rescue operation.”Applauded for their bravery and technical skills, Praveen and Balvinder said it was their most difficult operation and the first-of-its kind in their entire career.

Later, CM Pushkar Singh Dhami met them and made it a point to mention their names in front of people he addressed at the site.

He also told the workers trapped in about Praveen and Balvinder.

And the NDRF men.