Shimla, July 26 (Inditop.com) A decade ago Captain Saurabh Kalia and five of his men were captured by insurgents in the icy hills of Kargil and tortured for days before their mutilated bodies were handed back. As India commemorates the military victory, Saurabh’s parents plan to use the Right to Information Act to know about steps taken by the government to highlight war crimes.
“For the past 10 years, the government is just assuring us that it would highlight the war crimes committed against our son and other soldiers during the Kargil war at the international fora, but nothing concrete has materialised. Now, my next move will be to seek information under the RTI Act in this regard,” N.K. Kalia, 61, a retired senior scientist from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, told IANS by phone.
“Through the RTI we will come to know about the steps taken, if any, by the government to highlight the plight of victims of war crimes. If the reply is not satisfactory, the next step will be to launch a campaign to take the issue to a logical conclusion,” he said.
The bodies of the six soldiers of the 4 Jat regiment were handed over to the authorities June 9, 1999, two weeks after they were reported missing.
Saurabh, who passed out from the Indian Military Academy just a few months before the conflict did not live to receive his first pay cheque.
“Of course, their supreme sacrifice has made the country proud. But our only grudge is that the Indian government has so far failed to fight the scourge of war crimes at the international level,” Kalia, who is now settled at Palampur, 40 km from the district headquarters town of Kangra, said.
“Though the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government (1999-2004) expressed concern at the heinous crime and promised to take up the issue at the international level, in all these years the issues got diluted,” Kalia recalled.
To highlight the plight of war crimes victims, Kalia has started an online signature campaign.
“The pain of losing a young son is hard to describe in words. But we feel content with the fact that many citizens have supported us through online signature campaigns. Till date more than 13,000 people have put up their signatures,” he said.
Today, Saurabh’s photographs, his uniforms, shoes and mementoes are kept in his room, which has been named ‘Saurabh Smriti Kaksha’ (a museum), in the Kalias’ four-bedroom house in Palampur.
The Himachal Pradesh government has raised ‘Saurabh Van Vihar’ in a sprawling area of 35 acres here besides renaming a street in the town as Capt Saurabh Kalia Marg.
