New Delhi:
Colonel Munindra Nath Rai, who died fighting terrorists in Kashmir on Tuesday, will be cremated at Brar Square in the Delhi Cantonment this morning.
The 39-year-old Colonel was killed 24 hours after he was awarded a gallantry medal on the Republic Day. Colonel Rai, the highest-ranking military officer to be killed in the region in nearly a year, was the youngest of the 13 recipients of the Yudh Seva Medal or YSM this year.
Colonel Rai was the Commanding Officer of the 42 Rashtriya Rifles and was known to lead from the front.
On Tuesday morning, he received intelligence inputs that terrorists were hiding in a house at a village in Tral, not far from J&K capital Srinagar and he rushed there with a quick reaction team of eight to 12 men.
Army sources said that when Col Rai's team reached the house and cordoned it off, its residents, suspected to be relatives of the terrorists, requested them not to carry out a full-scale operation, as that would entail sequestering the entire village.
As the Colonel was engaging with the residents, two terrorists rushed out firing blindly. Col Rai was hit in the temple and Sanjeev Singh, a part of the Special Operations Group, was killed instantly. The terrorists were shot down.
The Colonel died in hospital.
His last status on the mobile messaging service WhatsApp, posted two months ago, read: "Play your role in life with such passion, that even after the curtains come down, the applause doesn't stop."
He is survived by his wife and three children.