In step with the Army tradition, they appeared stoic as they watched Brigadier Ravi Datt Mehta on his final journey. But deep within, the slain hero’s wife Sunita, daughter Bhawana and son Udit were devastated by a numbing sense of loss.
“My father was different. He was my hero and he will continue to remain my hero,” said Flt Lt Udit after his father was cremated at the Brar Square with full military honours. Military attaché Brig Mehta died in a suicide attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul on Monday.
Buglers played the last post when the pyre was lit by Udit. A soldier at the cremation ground said, “For an army man, death on duty is the ultimate sacrifice, but for an officer to die like this is simply unacceptable.”
Heartrending scenes were witnessed at the cremation of senior IFS official V Venkateswara Rao when his 11-year-old son Karthick broke down while performing the last rites of his father who was killed in the suicide attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul.
The class eight student wept inconsolably as he came forward to lit his father’s funeral pyre. Tears gushed down his face even as his relatives and his father’s colleagues tried to console him.
Rao’s wife Malathi, special instructor at a Sanskrit School in the Capital, and her daughter Amulya, also a school student, had their eyes wet throughout the ceremony held at Brar Square Cemetery at the Delhi Cantonement.
What should the nation do to remember their sacrifices?
2 Comments
July 10, 2008 at 5:42 am
It is very pity to read the case of District forest officer S. Jeet Kumar Singh who is missing from july 5th at Ghaziabad Vaishali. It is very bad to see these type of incidents to senior citizens and there is nodoubt that sometime corruption, murders, robberies what is this? No safety for senior citizens too.
What is the remedy for all these in our Nation? will the police commissioner give a possible response to our readers in this regard?
M.Sampathkumar
New Delhi
July 12, 2008 at 4:52 pm
We all will remember this day when our brave soldiers died and became a target of the cowards terrorists. Their souls rest in peace. They died but we will take the revenge of their deaths. We will take revenge of their worthwhile death. The terrorists have to pay for this , for their unnecessary sacrifice.MY HAND HELD HIGH. The government should act on this attack instead of regretting.