“MY SON has died but if all the people stop sending their children to join the Army, then who will fight for the nation?’’
Mohammad Haneef is waiting under the shadow of a tree near his single-storey home in Salani village on the Mendhar-Poonch road for the body of his 24-year-old son Aurangzeb, a Rashtriya Rifles soldier who was abducted and killed Thursday by militants.
“Jebi” was on his way home for Eid, and Haneef is devastated. And yet, the 55-year-old ex-serviceman insists, he is far from broken. “Death has to come one day. I had got him recruited in the Army to serve the nation. A soldier’s job is to kill the enemy or get killed,’’ he says.
Aurangzeb was the fourth among ten children, including four girls, of Haneef and Raj Begum. Haneef’s eldest son Mohammad Qasim is in the Army while two of his younger sons, Mohammad Tariq and Mohammad Shabir, are set to join the armed forces. Tariq has cleared the written and ground tests, and was in Pune for the medical test on June 22. Shabir has cleared the ground and medical tests, and is preparing for the written test on July 27.
“We are a family of soldiers,” says Haneef, the father. But inside his house, Aurangzeb’s mother Raj is inconsolable.
By- Arun Sharma