New Delhi: The body of CRPF personnel Pintu Kumar Singh, killed in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kupwara district on Friday during an anti-terrorist operation, was brought to Patna airport on Sunday morning. The encounter is underway.
However, not a single minister from the Nitish Kumar cabinet was present at the airport to pay homage to the jawan as all senior leaders of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) seemed to be busy with the rally to be held later in the day in the state capital and would be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bihar chief minister.
According to reports, district magistrate Kumar Ravi, senior police officer Garima Mallick, top officers of the Central Reserve Police Force, state Congress chief Madan Mohan Jha and Lok Janshakti Party MP Choudhary Mahboob Ali Kaiser were at the airport to receive Singh’s body.
“It’s very unfortunate that chief minister Nitish Kumar did not bother to come to pay his last respect,” NDTV quoted Sanjay Singh, uncle of the CRPF inspector who was from Dhanchakki village in Begusarai, 130 km from Patna.
Two CRPF Inspectors and two officers were killed and five other security personnel injured in the gunfight in the Babagund area of Kralgand in Handwara, Kupwara, on Friday.
Sources said, when the security forces went to retrieve the militant bodies amid a lull, one of the two militants, earlier believed to be dead stood up and fired indiscriminately.
A civilian was also killed in the firing and several others were injured near the encounter site.
On February 16, Kumar, his deputy Sushil Kumar Modi and Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had come to the airport to pay their tribute to two CRPF jawans from Bihar who were killed in the Pulwama suicide attack.
Sunday’s public meeting at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan holds significance as Modi and Kumar will share the stage for the first time after 2010.