Doctor’s family mystery turns up war hero
A mystery that has haunted the family of a Welland physician for nearly 73 years has finally been resolved.
Throughout his life, Dr. Pran Kundi said the fate of long-lost uncle Raj Kumar Tejpal has gnawed at his family. Kundi recalled sensing the “chronic unhappiness” in his mother, Indra Kundi, never knowing her brother’s fate, who was listed as “missing in action” in 1945.
Tejpal was 21 years old, serving as a pilot with the Wolfpack — the nickname given to the Royal Indian Airforce’s 9th Squadron — fighting battles over Asia during the Second World War. He was last seen flying his Hawker Hurricane in dive-bombing and strafing attacks over Burma.
The family mystery had a profound impact on Kundi, who has kept a black-and-white photograph of Tejpal, dressed in uniform beside the plane that carried him into battle, on a shelf in his medical office.
Kundi-referred to his uncle and the impact his disappearance had on his family in a story published in the Welland Tribune in 2010, at the time urging local federal politicians to work towards pulling Canadian forces out of Afghanistan in the hope of preventing another family from experiencing the same heartbreak his own had endured.
Kundi said his grief-stricken family never stopped hoping Tejpal was alive — somewhere. But as a result of their grief, Kundi said they never researched his disappearance, opting instead to visit fortune tellers who offered a way to kindle their hopes.
“It was just to console them,” Kundi said.
He said fortune tellers the family visited claimed the young pilot was lost in the jungles of Burma, or that he had lost his memory and a woman was looking after him. Kundi said another fortune teller told the family that Tejpal had become a priest in a temple near India’s border, and the misinformation inspired an aunt to visit that temple on two occasions to make donations to help with the facility’s upkeep.
For Kundi and his sister, Kamlesh Sharma, their uncle’s fate remained a mystery throughout their lives.
But at long last, Kundi said he and his sister have learned the fate of their uncle, putting the long-standing family mystery to rest.
During a vacation earlier this year, Kundi said his sister met Allan McKinnon-Brown, a man from England who proved to be an expert on Second World War history. Sharma told him about the family mystery.
On Dec .9, S harm a received an email from McKinnon-Brown including the answers the family had sought for decades.
Through his research, he learned that Tejpal was flying one of 10 aircraft on March 25, 1945, assigned to bomb enemy positions in Burma. Tejpal failed to pull out of a dive-bombing run, and “the aircraft exploded when hit the deck,” McKinnon-Brown wrote in his email.
He also told Sharma that Tejpal was included on a roll of honour with the Indian military — an honour which Kundi described as the equivalent of receiving the Purple Heart in the U.S. — and that his name was inscribed on the Kranji War Memorial in Singapore.
Kundi plans to visit that memorial in the months to come, as well as some of the locations that his uncle would have visited during his time with the air force.