NEW DELHI: “Agar mere saamne koi mar jaata, toh bahut dukh hota hamesha... (had anyone died in front of me, it would have hurt me forever),” head constable Deepak Dahiya (31) told TOI on Tuesday. A day earlier, Dahiya had come face to face with a rioter, who pointed a pistol at him even as he himself stood defiant with just a lathi in hand.Dahiya hails from Sonepat and was inducted into Delhi Police in 2010 as a constable. He cleared the exam for the post of head constable and is currently undergoing training at Wazirabad.Recalling the events of Monday that catapulted him to front page of newspapers, Dahiya said: “I was deployed at Maujpur Chowk. Things suddenly took an extremely violent turn and people started pelting stones at each other. As I moved towards the scene of violence, I heard a gunshot. I saw a man wearing a red sweatshirt... he was wielding a pistol. I immediately jumped to the other carriageway to divert his attention.”Dahiya explained that in such situations, a cop is trained to put the lives of civilians above his own. “He was charging ahead... I walked up to him to divert his attention.. I could not have allowed anyone else to come in his way. My priority was to ensure that there was no casualty,” he said. Asked what was going in his mind at that particular moment, Dahiya said: “Kaam hain mera, karna hi hai... (it is my job and I have to do it).”Dahiya’s wife and two daughters reside in Sonepat, along with the rest of his family. Till Tuesday morning, they were unaware that he had come this close to death. “I did not tell them anything, but my photograph went viral on the social media. My wife called me up all worried. I tried to dodge her questions, but even though my face wasn’t visible in the photographs, she recognised me from the blue stripes on the jacket... I kept quiet as I know that she has full confidence in me,” he said.Dahiya hails from a family of men in uniform. His father retired from Indian Coast Guard. He has two younger brothers: one is with Delhi Police and the other is with the coast guard.