71 war widows wait to see husband ends

  • | Monday | 17th December, 2018

Amra Devi, 65, was staring at a photograph of her husband, a martyr of the 1971 war, for the first time.Devi, then 18, had just got married when her husband Sundar Singh, belonging to The Brigade of the Guards regiment, had to leave for the war. Since this photograph is blurry, we are planning to get a portrait drawn and gift it to her soon.” Sainik welfare board officer DD Pant told TOI, “We had been trying to help her for the past many years. We even tried to draw Singh’s portrait but neither Devi nor any villager remembered his face. But I always wanted to see him one more time,” said the widow who had waited for almost five decades for this moment.

UTTARKASHI: It was a moment that brought out both tears and smiles. Amra Devi, 65, was staring at a photograph of her husband, a martyr of the 1971 war, for the first time.Devi, then 18, had just got married when her husband Sundar Singh, belonging to The Brigade of the Guards regiment, had to leave for the war. There was no time for the customary wedding photo that couples from this remote hill region would then get clicked at a studio in the nearby Dunda town. Sundar, 20, was killed somewhere in erstwhile East Pakistan and his body was buried there.Soon after, Devi began her quest to see him one last time. She contacted the district administration but it didn’t have any photographic record of the martyr.After a long struggle, the Directorate of Soldier Welfare and Rehabilitation Department came to her rescue.It started contacting the martyr’s friends from the regiment and they in turn went through the records at the regiment’s headquarters in Maharashtra. Finally, he was spotted in a group photo.On the occasion of Vijay Diwas on Sunday, district administration officials gifted the photo, though a blurry one, to the widow “I had even forgotten how he looked and how he talked, but now he seems alive all over again. I was a newlywed at that time with dreams like all others. With the news of his death, a part of me died. But I always wanted to see him one more time,” said the widow who had waited for almost five decades for this moment. Sainik welfare board officer DD Pant told TOI, “We had been trying to help her for the past many years. We even tried to draw Singh’s portrait but neither Devi nor any villager remembered his face. Finally, we got lucky. Since this photograph is blurry, we are planning to get a portrait drawn and gift it to her soon.”

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