A pall of gloom descended at the funeral of yet another of Maharashtra’s sons as the last rites of Jawan Saurabh Pharate, who was killed in a terror strike in Kashmir on Saturday, was performed with military solemnity amid a massive crowd of mourners in Fursungi outside Pune city on Monday.
The 33-year-old Pharate, along with two other jawans, died in the assault when motorcycle-borne militants fired on an army bus in Pampore on the outskirts of Srinagar. Survived by his parents, an older brother, his wife and two twin daughters, Pharate had just returned to his station after a two-month leave during which the family celebrated the birthday of the twins on October 24. This brief spell of happiness was ruptured on Saturday when the news of Saurabh’s death reached the Pharate family.
The martyred jawan’s mortal remains were flown from Jammu and kept at the Armed Forces Medical College here, where scores of people paid their final respects.
His body was later brought to his ancestral village of Bekrainagar draped in the National Flag where Jawan Pharate was cremated with full military honours. As witnessed in previous funerals of martyred soldiers from the State, thousands of mourners from adjoining villages converged in Fursungi to share the sorrow of the Pharate family. The funeral pyre was lit amid heart-rending chants of ‘Jawan Saurabh Pharate Amar Rahe’.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, along with Pune Guardian Minister Girish Bapat, visited the martyr’s kin and expressed his condolences.
Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar commiserated with the bereaved family late Sunday evening.
Nandkumar Pharate, the martyred jawan’s father, recalled his son’s courage and exemplary sacrifice and demanded stern governmental action to stem the rising tide of militancy. Following in the footsteps of his elder brother, Saurabh had donned the uniform in 2003.
Maharashtra’s lost sons
He is the second soldier from Maharashtra to be martyred in less than a fortnight following the death of Major Kunal Gosavi, who hailed from Pandharpur and was killed in a terror strike on the Indian Army camp in Nagrota in Jammu late last month.
Since November last year, several of Maharashtra’s bravehearts have been killed in action, often in consecutive months, battling either the Pakistan Army or militants in Kashmir in recent times.
Last month, Lance Naik Rajendra Tupare was killed when the Pakistani army opened unprovoked firing along the Line of Control (LoC) in the Poonch sector.
The month before that, Nitin Subhash Koli, a 28-year-old Border Security Force (BSF) constable tragically died during heavy retaliatory shelling by Pakistan armed forces.
In September, Lance Naik G. Shanker, Sepoy Sandeep Thok and Sepoy Uike Janrao of the 6 Bihar Regiment were killed in the Uri terror strike.
In May this year, Naik Pandurang Gawade of the counter-insurgency 41 Rashtriya Riffles (RR) died fighting militants in Kupwara in North Kashmir.
The gallant Col. Santosh Mahadik, who hailed from Satara district, was killed in an encounter in Kupwara in November 2015 while Naik Shinde Shankar Chandrabhan of Bayale Village in Nashik district fell battling militants in Chowkibal in February this year. Both belonged to the 41 RR.
