Dehradun,  An inspector with Uttarakhand police, Harak Singh, has turned good Samaritan after he gave shelter to an old woman in his house at the disaster-hit Reni village in Chamoli district.

After the February 7 deluge, the house of 85-year-old Sona Devi had been completely damaged, rendering her along with her daughter homeless.

When Singh, who is also a native of Reni village, started rescue and relief work there, he came to know about the plight of Devi. Singh, who lives in Dehradun along with his family, immediately offered his house to Devi.

Singh, who is presently working with the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF), is now being hailed by the villagers and top police personnel alike.

"It is very commendable when we hear about such good gestures, especially by people from our own police force. Such incidents bring closeness and good relations between civilians and police," said SDRF commandant Navneet Bhullar.

After the gesture of Singh, the state police are looking for closed or deserted houses from where the inhabitants have migrated to the plains so that they can be used as temporary shelters for the disaster-hit people.

Significantly, most of those who lost their lives in the February 7 deluge were workers who had come from outside the state for work at the two power projects. Nearly 465 families in 12 villages of Chamoli district have also been affected by the floods as they lost their houses, domestic animals and farm lands.

"In our Reni village, only one house of Sona Devi was damaged. Though we lost five persons of our village, the damage to the village was not much," said Bhagwan Singh Rana, the village pradhan of Reni.

Some social organisations have shown their readiness to work in the disaster affected areas. Even film actor Sonu Sood has expressed his desire to provide monetary help to four daughters of Alam Singh Pundir of Tehri, who was killed in the floods, for their studies. Sood also shared a photograph of the four daughters on his Tweeter handle. Pundir's body was among the first to be brought out from the disaster-hit tunnel of the Tapovan project.