Incredible moment Sikh man ignored religious protocol & saved four drowning teenager.

A heroic Sikh man has broken a strict religious protocol by removing his turban to help save four youths from drowning in a canal.

Inderpal Singh jumped to help the boys, taking off his turban, unravelling it and throwing it out as a life line, after spotting the teenagers struggling to keep their heads above the gushing water in a canal at Sular Ghaat, in the Punjab region of northern India.

Mobile phone footage shows the dramatic moment Mr Singh leapt to action from where he was sitting on the canal embankment, on Sunday, reports NDTV.

The four youngsters, aged 18-25 years, had entered the canal as part of a religious ceremony to submerge a Ganesha idol when a gush of water made them lose their footing.

After attempting to pull them out with a wire that was lying on the embankment which broke in the act, Mr Singh took of his turban and tossed it into the water.

'I had no time to think and quickly removed by turban and threw at the drowning boys and pulled them in,' he said.

It is a doctrine of Sikkhism that one can only remove their turbans at home, while bathing.

Later, another Sikh man named Kanwaljit Singh followed suit and tossed his turban into the water to help rescue the youths.

'My immediate reaction was to jump into the canal and try to save them. But I cannot swim. So I removed my turban and used it to save the boys,' he said.

The rescued men, later identified as Inderpal Singh, Jiwan Singh, Kamalpreet Singh and Inder Tiwari, later praised their saviours for their bravery.

Footage of the incident has been widely circulated online, with the two men being heralded as heroes.

The scenes echo another similar incident from New Zealand in May, when Harman Singh used his turban to save the life of a boy who was bleeding from the head after being hit by a car.

Mr Singh was heralded a hero across the world when photographs emerged of him without his turban and it tucked under the boy's head in South Auckland.

He received thousands of messages and comments on his Facebook page.

Mr Singh said he was overwhelmed with all the praise.

'Thousands of people have said 'well done'. I was only doing what I had to and trying to be a decent member of the community,' he said.

'Thanks to all who messages, calls... thanks all the worldwide Facebook members who messaged me. I think i just did my job nothing else.' 

After the story went viral, Good Samaritans donated new furniture for the 22-year-old student's sparse home, which contained a mattress on the floor and only a couple of plastic garden chairs.