Kolkata: The West Bengal government has offered monetary compensation and jobs to the kin of two of the soldiers who died in Indian-administered Kashmir.
“On humanitarian grounds, we will offer jobs of home guards to someone in the family and Rs200,000 [Dh10,966] to each of the families of two jawans [soldiers] Gangadhar Dolui and Biswajit Ghorai as special cases,” chief minister Mamata Banerjee told reporters at the state secretariat, adding this was the responsibility of the union government.
Two of her cabinet ministers — Arup Roy and Rajiv Banerjee — had visited Dolui’s residence in Howrah district’s Jagatballavpur, she said.
“My ministers were present at Dolui’s residence at Jagatballavpur,” she said, adding a gun salute was carried out.
The state government has offered jobs but the families of the soldiers are not in physical condition to accept the offer as the parents of both the soldiers are aged and the siblings are still in school.
Biswajit and his family lived in a mud house in the village of Sagardwip, in North 24 parganas district and his father, a daily wage labourer, is of advanced aged. His elder sister was about to get married.
The other slain soldier, Gangadhar, was a son of a farmer and lived in a mud house in his village Jagadballavpu, Howrah district. His brother Barun studies in class XI and his parents are unable to fathom what lies ahead for them.
“We had worked very hard to educate our son. His income from the first two years of his service was spent in returning the loan we had taken for his education. He was thinking of building a house sometime later this year. Now all is lost,” Omkarnath Dolui, Gangadhar’s father told Gulf News.
“Lot of people had joined the army from this village. He was inspired seeing them, Gangadhar left his under graduation studies and went for the exam and after two years of training he was posted at the Bihar regiment of the army,” Omkarnath added.
