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| Feb 28, 2000 | ||
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| JHAL, HARYANA They Also Served They were heroes-like the Kargil martyrs-but never got their due By Sayantan Chakravarty
In Kashmir, where Operation Rakshak has claimed around 1,500 lives since 1993, deaths like those of Captain Soman Pillai are routine. His wife Ramita on her 23rd birthday -- April 21, 1998 -- received a message the 26-year-old captain of 28 Mountain Division had died in a "battle accident" while on a mission to check ammunition stocks at an army post in Kupwara district -- typical armyspeak for soldiers killed by militants. Ramita came to know later, much later, that her husband had walked straight into an ambush while on a night patrol. On hearing the news, Ramita's father Lt-Colonel Rajmohan suffered a heart attack. Back in Mumbai with her mother now, the young widow find life tough. The promised compensation and pension haven't materialised. What hurts her after nearly two years is that no one seems to care for, or remember, her husband's sacrifice. "Are they lesser soldiers?" she asks of men like her husband. Others ask the same question. Gunner Yugambar Dixit, 30, of 286 Medium Regiment, was blown apart by a mine hidden in the snow in Operation Meghdoot in Siachen. His wife Usha, expecting their second child, waited for him at home in Badhuma in Bihar's Palamau district. One hot June day in 1998, only her husband's coffin came home from the icy heights. In addition to the Rs 10 lakh ex-gratia, the Bihar Government promised a job to a family member but it never materialised. "They play with our self-respect," says Usha. And think back further, to the war no one wants to remember, in Sri Lanka in the '80s. No compensation, no rehabilitation, no memorials, only Rs 3,000 per month as pension. Lance Naik Harsh Bahadur Singh, 47, was killed in Operation Pawan in Sri Lanka in April 1989. An army messenger turned up at his widow Kamla Devi's house in Sadipur in Uttar Pradesh with some official papers and a tattered, blood-stained uniform. The body never arrived. The 45-year-old widow and her three sons have lived a precarious existence since, with a meagre pension and hostile in-laws. "Where do I go? What do I do?" she asks disconsolately. More than 5,000 men have perished in these strife-torn areas over the past decade, and the toll is mounting still. Says Major-General Ugrasen Yadava, the outgoing director-general, resettlement: "The message going out is that other soldiers are lesser men for whom the country couldn't care less." A message which seemed to be reinforced in September 1998 when the government turned down an army proposal to upgrade benefits for those who died in other military actions. Compensation for those killed in Kargil was Rs 18-20 lakh; families of soldiers who died in operations between 1993 and 1995 initially got Rs 1 lakh. From January 1998, they received Rs 7.5 lakh if the soldier died in direct combat, Rs 5 lakh otherwise. Did these heroes get caught in the wrong war? |
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Havaldar
Hans Raj Yadav, 42, from Jhal in Haryana was never in the media glare. His
wife Shanti Devi was mourning the death of her seven-year-old son when she
heard in June 1998 that the 11 Kumaon Regiment havaldar had been blown up
by a landmine while tracking militants during Operation Rhino in Assam.
The 37-year-old schoolteacher has since faced the onerous task of bringing
up a teenaged daughter alone, even as relatives and villagers torment her
for bringing them ill-luck and her husband's family pressure her to marry
one of Yadav's brothers to keep the Haryana Government's compensation of
Rs 5 lakh within the family.