Shaheed Sepoy Raswinder Singh
Shaheed Sepoy Raswinder Singh
SEPOY
RASWINDER SINGH, 22
8 Sikh Regiment
Guts and
Glory
MISSION:
Part of the first column given the task of taking the crucial Tiger Hill
overlooking the Srinagar-Leh highway, he killed three intruders before
he was shot in the head.
Proud parents of Shaheed Raswinder Singh
It was the kind
of midnight knock that 900-odd residents of Ghurkhani village in Punjab's
Mansa district hazily recalled. They were common in the early '90s when
terrorism was rampant and police raids took place frequently. But on May
29, the policemen who came to Gurkhani in the dead of night had a different
function: they had come to deliver wrapped in the tricolour, the body of
Raswinder Singh, another casualty on that bleak battlefield in Kargil.
Ghurkhani, situated
in the backwaters of the Malwa district, is plagued with a water-logging
problem that brings on repeated crop failures. "Seeing this, my son decided
to join the army. He liked the idea of living with guts and honour," says
Harcharan Singh, Raswinder's father. Like most Jat Sikh boys, Raswinder
took to the gun more than the plough. On leave from his regiment (the 8
Sikh) recently, Raswinder had got himself photographed with a self-loading
rifle in different poses. These he had framed and put up on the walls of
his house. Before going back to his regiment, father and son stood in the
yard and inspected their house. "Once the war is over, I'll come back and
help you repair the cracks," Raswinder had promised.
That won't happen
now. But Harcharan doesn't have to worry -- over the past two weeks people
from all over have been pouring in to share his grief and help in any which
way they can. This desolate Punjab tehsil already boasts of having three
martyrs in the Kargil war -- but Raswinder's feat is easily the one that
everyone recollects with pride. Raswinder was involved with the important
task of reclaiming Tiger Hill -- a strategic point in the Drass sector
-- which gave the intruders access to the Srinagar-Leh highway. He was
part of the first column that went up the hill on the impossible task of
trying to uproot a well-entrenched enemy up in the heights. Most of the
patrol was pinned down by heavy fire, but Raswinder along with another
jawan pressed on killing three of the intruders before an enemy bullet
pierced his head.
This tale has
now been recounted a million times in Harcharan's house. Yet, every time
it ends there is a solemn silence among those who have trooped in to pay
their respects. Among them is Tarlok Singh, the only survivor of the five
Indian National Army soldiers that this village has produced. And even
this 85-year-old war veteran has a tear in his eye as he mumbles: "I will
die a pensioner but this boy will live on forever -- as a martyr."
Ramesh Vinayak
Courtesy:
INDIA TODAY
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