A sea of mourners gathered at the temple town of Pandharpur, 200 km from here, to pay their last respects on Thursday to Major Kunal Gosavi, who was killed in a terror strike on the Army camp in Nagrota in Jammu earlier this week.
Major Gosavi’s mortal remains were flown to Delhi from Jammu this morning. From there, the plane carrying his body arrived at the Pune Airport, where he was accorded a guard of honour. A special Army helicopter then flew Major Gosavi’s body, draped in a Tricolour, to his ancestral Wakhari village in Pandharpur.
Outrage against Pakistan pervaded the proceedings, with villagers accusing the neighbouring country of sponsoring terror groups, leading to the death of many Indian jawans. The funeral pyre was lit amid heart-rending chants of ‘Major Kunal Gosavi amar rahe ’.
A graduate from the Brihan Maharashtra College of Commerce (BMCC) in Pune, Major Gosavi (32) joined the Army in 2006. He had recently returned to Jammu with his wife Uma and their three-year-old daughter Umang following a month’s leave.
“Despite my personal grief, I am proud that my son breathed his last while fighting for his country. I urge the government to wage a war against the enemy before more precious lives are lost,” said Munnagir Gosavi, Major Gosavi’s father.
Besides his wife and daughter, Major Gosavi is survived by his parents and two brothers.
Seven army personnel, including two Major-rank officers, were killed and eight other security men, including a BSF DIG, were injured in the Nagrota strike, before six heavily-armed terrorists were gunned down in separate encounters. Lance Naik Sambhaji Kadam from Nanded was also among those killed in the attack. He was cremated with full honours at his native place in Nanded on Thursday.
Both, Major Gosavi and Lance Naik Kadam are the latest in a long line of Maharashtra’s bravehearts to be killed in action battling either the Pakistan Army or the terrorist insurgency in Kashmir in the recent months.
In November, Lance Naik Rajendra Tupare was killed when the Pakistani Army opened unprovoked firing along the Line of Control in the Poonch sector.
The month before that, Nitin Subhash Koli, a 28-year-old Border Security Force constable was killed during retaliatory shelling by the Pakistani 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.