First female amputee climbs Everest AN Indian woman who lost her leg after she was thrown from a moving train two years ago has become the first female amputee to climb Everest, expedition organisers say. Arunima Sinha, 26, from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, reached the peak on Tuesday morning after a slow climb from Everest Base Camp. "She left high camp at 6pm on Monday evening and arrived at the summit at 10.55am (1510 AEST) on Tuesday," Ang Tshering Sherpa, founder of Asian Trekking, the company that organised the expedition, told AFP on Wednesday. Sinha's guides were concerned about her slow pace until the team reached an 8750-metre junction that climbers pass through on their way to the top of the mountain, Ang Tshering said. "But once she got to that point, she gained energy and confidence and started moving really quickly," Ang Tshering said. Two years ago, the former national-level volleyball player was shoved from a moving train by thieves when she reportedly attempted to fight them off as they tried to stealing her purse. A passing train crushed her left leg, forcing doctors to amputate below the knee to save her life. At that time everyone was worried for me. I then realised I had to do something in my life so that people stop looking at me with pity," Sinha told Indian TV before leaving for the climb. The Tata Steel Adventure Foundation, which sponsored Sinha's climb, contacted Ang Tshering's Asian Trekking company in 2012 about providing training and guiding for the expedition. "We knew her story, we knew she recovered well from the amputation because she's a very active athlete," Ang Tshering said, adding that the company trained her on Nepal's Island Peak during the 2012 spring climbing season. Tom Whittaker, a British mountaineer, became the first person with a disability to summit the peak in 1998 after a car crash almost two decades earlier had forced him to have his foot amputated.