Havaldar Sukhraj Singh''s final journey home

Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Batala, November 30

Tuesday is a day that will be etched deeply in the minds of Havaldar Sukhraj Singh’s family forever. The 34-year-old was to come home to his family and his 7-year-old daughter, to whom he had promised a vacation. 

His senior officers sanctioned his leave from Tuesday. He was to board a train from Jammu to Batala at 1 pm.

His family was awaiting a phone call at 11 pm. What they got instead was a phone call that changed their lives completely: a senior officer of Singh’s regiment called to say Havaldar Singh was one of the seven people killed in a militant attack on an army base in Nargota on Tuesday.

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Singh was part of the Sikh regiment he had joined in 2004 and was posted at Nagrota six months ago.

His body will be flown to Tibri Cantonment on Thursday morning and later driven home.

Gurdaspur Deputy Commissioner Pardeep Sabharwal, who visited the family earlier in the day, said his family would receive Rs 5 lakh ex-gratia. 

“He will also be given a plot of land and his wife will be given a job commensurate with her qualifications. Sukhraj is a martyr and a martyr cannot be dishonoured,” Kunwar Ravinder Singh Vicky, general secretary of the Shaheed Sainik Parivar Suraksha Parishad, said.      

AAP candidate Gurvinder Singh Shampura from the neighbouring Vidhan Sabha seat of Fatehgarh Churian and SAD candidate from Batala, LS Lodhinangal, also visited the family.