At an altitude of 11,000 feet and the temperature well below freezing point, the National Ice Hockey Championship ended today at Jammu and Kashmir's Ladakh.
The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) team took home the trophy after a hard-fought win over the Army team.
The ITBP team defeated the Army team 3-2 in a thrilling final. Ten teams were part of the Ice Hockey Championship, which was a key attraction for locals for the last two weeks. The tournament was organised by the Ice Hockey Association of India (IHAI).
The ITBP has a strong ice hockey team, with many of its players also representing the national team. Two months ago, the ITBP team defeated a team from Japan to lift a trophy, while it also won a regional ice hockey team in Leh.
The ITBP was raised in October 1962 for reorganising the frontier intelligence and security set-up along the Indo-Tibetan border. Only four battalions were sanctioned to begin with, the force's official website says.
In 2004, the entire stretch of India-China border was assigned to the ITBP for border-guarding duty and, accordingly, ITBP, replaced the Assam Rifles in Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh in 2004.
Among the many roles of the ITBP include detection and prevention of border violations, checking illegal immigration and trans-border smuggling.
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