NEW DELHI: In a historic milestone that will be remembered in the pages of Indian mountaineering and policing history, Sub-Inspector (SI) Geeta Samota of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) has emerged as the first CISF officer to climb Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain, which stands at an eye-watering height of 8,849 meters.
Geeta climbed to the top on the dawn of May 19, marking a historic achievement that celebrates a powerful tale of courage, determination, and an indomitable spirit.
Born in Chak village of Rajasthan’s Sikar district, Geeta grew up in a humble home with her four sisters. Her early life was marked by a resolve to overcome the norms and redefine the script for girls in rural India. A promising hockey player at college, an injury changed the direction of her goals and left her to join the CISF in 2011.
It was among the forces that Geeta found her interest in mountaineering—field largely untapped in CISF ranks then. Her talent soon came to be noticed, and in 2015, she was picked for a basic mountaineering course at the ITBP Training Institute in Auli, where she was the sole woman in her batch. She topped it up with an advanced course in 2017, becoming the sole CISF personnel to do so.
Geeta’s mountaineering career has consisted of a series of outstanding firsts. In 2019, she was the first woman from any CAPF to climb Mount Satopanth (7,075 m) in Uttarakhand and Mount Lobuche (6,119 m) in Nepal. Although her scheduled Everest expedition in 2021 was called off due to technical issues, it led her to the more ambitious “Seven Summits” challenge — climbing the highest peak on every one of the seven continents.
Unfazed by the pandemic, Geeta climbed four of the Seven Summits within a mere six months and 27 days — Mount Kosciuszko (Australia), Mount Elbrus (Russia), Mount Kilimanjaro (Tanzania), and Mount Aconcagua (Argentina) — making her the quickest Indian lady to achieve this feat. She also conquered five peaks in Ladakh’s Rupshu region in a three-day time frame, encompassing three above 6,000 meters and two above 5,000 meters.