OUR ARMY IS AMAZING, WE ARE PROUD OF IT!

The campaign to search for their missing fellow soldiers for more than 56 years is a tale of bravery & determination

- DR. VIJAY DARDA

I happened to unexpectedly meet our recently retired Army chief and son of Nagpur General Manoj Pande. As we exchanged pleasantries, he started telling his wife that this is Vijay Darda from Lokmat, who did a lot of work for the soldiers during the Kargil War. He built warm houses for the soldiers too. I humbly folded my hands. I know that there is at least one place in our country before which everyone bows, no matter which party they belong to, which religion, faith or caste they come from! That place is our Armed Forces. By Armed Forces, I mean the Indian Army, Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy.

The context in which I am writing this column on our Armed Forces today, is the story of the Indian Army.

On February 7, 1968, an Indian Air Force cargo plane crashed over Rohtang Pass while travelling from Chandigarh to Leh. There were 102 soldiers on board. Due to the rugged and snowcovered mountains, neither the wreckage nor the soldiers' bodies could be found immediately. However, the Indian Army did not give up and continued to send search parties to the area intermittently. Between 2003 and 2019, some bodies were found and the wreckage of the plane was discovered too. The Indian Army continued the search for its missing bravehearts. In the last week of September this year, a search team found bodies of four soldiers buried in snow near Dhaka Glacier at an altitude of 16,000 feet. The bodies of these soldiers Thomas Cherian, -Malkhan Singh, Narayan Singh and Munshi Ram -were taken to their respective villages where the last rites were performed.