Mangalore Senior Lawyer Metro Gold Lion D Padmanabha Kumar aka “Panna Prasad” for the second time has won Gold and Silver medals in the International Masters Athletic Championship 2015-16 meet held at Sri Lanka. The Mercantile Athletic Federation of Sri Lanka had organized an International Sports meet Championship 2015-16 for the Master Sports person from Sri lanka and India, with in the name of 32nd Ritzbury Mercantile Athletic Championship 2015-16 held at “ Mahinda Raja Paksha International Stadium, at Diyagam-Sri Lanka on 22 and 23 August 2015.
In the above meet about 2000 Athletics from different parts of India as well as Sri Lanka participated, one amongst them was Mangalore Senior most Lawyer, D. Padmanabha Kumar (Panna Prasad) who won two Gold, and one Silver Medals in the event of 100, 400,200 meter race at the age group of 55+ and was declared as a Master Championship 2015-16. Last year also in the same championship event, he won two Gold and one silver in 100, 200, & 400 meter race Two Gold, One Silver in the same Stadium.
Apart from sports, Panna Prasad has been a good Samaritan by rendering yeomen services to the society at large. More over he has saved about 23 lives in different contingent situation. To name a few- In the 31st National Veteran Championship 2011 held at Puduchery 2011 a veteran sportsman K. Ramesh collapsed after completing 400 mtr race with in 1 minute, and securing 1st place sustained with Cardiac arrest. Immediately Kumar attended Ramesh by performing some cardiac arrest exercises but all in vain- finally he gave resuscitation (mouth to mouth breathing) for half an hour which has saved Ramesh.
In a second incident, which happened in Mangaluru- a lorry and rickshaw accident took place at about 5.00 am- the crowd thought that the injured person in the rickshaw was dead, but Kumar noticing that the injured person was still breathing, acted quickly by taking him to the hospital and thereby saving his life- the recovered person’ s name is K Vasu Naguri from Mangaluru. In another incident while Kumar was returning home, a lorry coming in a wrong way had hit a motorcycle- in that impact the motor-cycle rider’s leg got cut and started bleeding heavily- noticing this Kumar shifted the injured person to the hospital in his car- the accident victim is fully recovered and his name is Ramakrishna Aithal, a Mescom Engineer at Attavar Station.
Other team members who went to Sri Lanka with Panna Prasad are : Anand Soans ,Siddaraju, Jithendra, Laxmana, Babugowda, Ganapathi, Shashikala, Prema, Jayakarrai, Lalitha and 12 others, all together 11 Gold, 7 Silver, and 5 Browns- a total of 23 medals including Kumar’s were won. Kumar says that he wants to participate in the forthcoming meet to be held at Singapore next month.