Martyr’s kin rue absence of any minister at airport

PATNA

: Though Prime Minister Narendra Modi and CM Nitish Kumar paid tributes to martyred

CRPF inspector Pintu Kumar Singh

(35) while addressing the NDA rally in Gandhi Maidan here on Sunday, neither any political leader of the ruling combine or RJD nor any minister was present at the city airport when his body was brought there in the morning.


Pintu, along with four others, were killed during an encounter with terrorists at Kupwara in Jammu and Kashmir on March 1. His body was brought to the airport by a commercial flight from Delhi around 8am. DIG Rajesh Kumar, DM Kumar Ravi, SSP Garima Malik and CRPF DIGs Neeraj Kumar and HS Mal were among the officials who paid tributes to the martyr at the airport.

Some of his family members had also reached the airport to receive the body, which was later taken to his native place Dhyan Chakki in Begusarai by a special IAF chopper. Pintu’s uncle Sanjay Kumar Singh, who was there at the airport, came down heavily on the state government and its leaders for “not giving the respect his nephew deserved”. “None of the ministers, not even our CM, visited the airport to pay tributes,” he said.

Congress state president Madan Mohan Jha and Khagaria MP Mehboob Ali Kaiser were the only political figures at the airport to pay tributes to the martyred CRPF officer from Dhyanchak village in Begusarai district.

Jha refused to make any political statement on the occasion, but Kaiser said someone from the state government must have been there to pay tributes to the martyr.

It may be recalled that Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, CM Nitish Kumar, deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi, former deputy CM Tejashwi Prasad Yadav and several other political figures had paid their last tributes to CRPF martyrs Sanjay Kumar Sinha and Ratan Kumar Thakur at the city airport on February 16. Sanjay from Taregana Matth under Masaurhi police station area in Patna and Thakur from Ratanpur village under Amdanda police station area in Bhagalpur, along with 38 other CRPF personnel, had been killed in Pulwama terror attack on February 14.

Meanwhile, thousands of people received Pintu’s body at Bakhri in Begusarai. His mortal remains were later taken to his Dhyan Chakki village where people with tricolours marched with the CRPF truck to the cremation ground while raising slogans of ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’, ‘Vande Mataram’ and ‘Pintu Singh Amar Rahe’.