Victim’s family votes, hopes job promise will be fulfilled

Ehsan Fazili

Tribune News Service

Budgam, April 18

Family members of Kifayat Hussain Ganai, who was killed when an IAF Mi-17 helicopter crashed at Grienda village near Budgam in February, cast votes in the election to the Srinagar seat on Thursday with a hope of getting a job for sustenance.

Kifayat, 20, was among seven persons, including six IAF men, who died in the crash on February 27 when the Mi-17 fell in a field on the outskirts of Grienda village amid high Indo-Pak tension following the Pulwama attack.

The family hopes that the elected representatives will listen to their woes and fulfil the demand pending for the past about two months.

They queued up at the nearby polling station at a government school along with several other villagers drawn from the humble houses on the either side of the road cutting through the village having 658 voters. Locals pointed towards the muddy link roads and spoke about the lack of proper power and drinking water supplies in the village.

The family of one of the IAF men, who died in the crash, had also visited the village last month and “broke down” on reaching the spot, said a shopkeeper. They also shared their grief and sorrow with the poor family of Kifayat, he added.

While a cash relief was given to the brother and two sisters of the deceased within days after the incident, the “authorities had also assured a job” to one of the family members, said Kifayat’s uncle Gulzar Ahmad.

Kifayat’s elder brother Bashir Ahmad finds it difficult to sustain livelihood in the absence of a source of income for the family.