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Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh on Thursday felicitated 23-year-old parajumper Sheetal Mahajan.
On December 15, this girl from a middle-class Pune family became the first woman to do a free-fall para-jump over the South Pole.
Mahajan is the only woman to have jumped over both poles of the earth.
Earlier in 2004, she had done a free-fall jump to land on the North Pole.
Mahajan was a novice till recently. She heard about para-jumping from a friend and was at once interested.
When she jumped over the North Pole, she had never seen a parachute before that. Neither had she ever been on a plane!
Again, when she jumped over the South Pole, she trained for just four days with the Indian Navy.
When she approached the Indian Navy for the first time, they had rejected her plea.
Mahajan did not give up and approached President A P J Abdul Kalam, seeking his intervention and got the Navy's permission.