No quota, no azadi, I want my razai: Slain Captain Pawan Kumar

“No father can be prouder”, said Sri Rajbir Singh, father of martyr Captain Pawan. “No father can be prouder”, he said.

The Army too appealed to the “people of Haryana” to give a “befitting farewell to this courageous son of their soil”.

Mahajan, 26, from Udhampur in Jammu, was with the 9 Para (Special Forces) battalion.

On display was not the chest-thumping “nationalism” of a bunch of lawyers wielding the Tricolour: Rather, for 23-year-old Captain Pawan Kumar of 10 Para, who died while leading from the front in a tricky mop up operation in Pampore, there was only one task at hand: to kill the terrorists who had sneaked into a civilian area.

One, Captain Pawan Kumar’s last Facebook message makes a cryptic allusion to the Jat agitation for reservations and the protests by Jawaharlal Nehru University students that the government has dubbed “anti-national”.

New Delhi: For Captain Pawan Kumar, a Jat and a JNU degree holder, all that mattered was love for the country and not calls of “azadi” on the campus or reservation demand by his community members in Haryana. “He was a very courageous and intrepid officer with barely three years of service but maturity beyond his years”, an Army spokesperson said.

Living to his motto, Captain Pawan of 10 Para (Special Forces) fought a close quarter battle with the highly entrenched militants before receiving the volley of bullets. Indian Army officers always lead from the front as is evident from the operations here in Kashmir in the recent past. It is believed that two to three militants are holed up in the EDI Complex.

Senior army officers from the Northern command headquarters also visited the family to pay their respects in the memory of a fearless heart.

Meanwhile, the encounter in Pampore entered its third day today with the security forces making all attempts to neutralise the group of terrorists, who have taken refuge inside an Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI) building. His last rites will be held on Monday. He said the operation might be prolonged as militants seem to be heavily armed. He also wished quick recovery to the injured soldiers.