2 yrs after he died, Pulwama martyr’s wife joins military
Dhoundiyal was killed on Feb. 17, 2019
Two years after Major Vibhuti Shankar Dhoundiyal was killed fighting terrorists in Pulwama, Kashmir, his wife Nitika Kaul was commissioned into the Indian Army as lieutenant. Northern Army commander Lt. Gen. Y.K. Joshi piped stars on her shoulders at a ceremony held at the Officers Training Academy in Chennai on Saturday.
“The day I stepped in (the academy) I felt that the same journey that he has traversed... I am traveling through the same journey,” said Lt. Kaul after the ceremony. She said that Major Dhoundiyal is always going to be part of her life.
“Even today he is somewhere around looking at me. I can feel that he is just holding me and saying ‘we did it’. I just love you Vibhu. I really love you.” She said that one needs to keep faith in oneself. “Last 11 months have made me learn so many things in life,” she added.
They got married in 2018 and within a year she lost him.
Major Dhoundiyal, 33, lost his life during an antiterror operation on February 17, 2019, in a village in Pulwama in which a top terrorist of Pakistanbased Jaish-eMohammad, Kamran was killed. Kamran was believed to be one of the conspirators of the suicide bombing in Pulwama on February 14 in which over 40 CRPF soldiers were killed.
Major Dhoundiyal was decorated with Shaurya Chakra (Posthumous) for his bravery.
During his funeral at their hometown in Dehradun, an emotional Nitika looked inside the coffin of her husband, blew him a kiss, and bent
over to say, “I love you.” Some six months after the death of her husband, she cleared the Short Service Commission (SSC) exam and the Services Selection Board (SSB) interview.
The citation for Major Dhoundiyal said that he had shown exceptional leadership qualities in various operations which had resulted in the elimination of five terrorists and recovery of 200 kilograms of explosive material.
The Pinglena village of Pulwama had witnessed a fierce gun battle between the JeM militants and security forces on February 17 and 18, 2019, leaving three of its members including top commanders Kamran Bhai alias Fahad and Ghazi Rasheed alias Luqman and Major Vibhuti Shankar Dhoundiyal, Havildar Sheo Ram, Sepoy Hari Singh and Sepoy Ajay Kuma, a J&K head-constable Abdur Rashid and a civilian Mushtaq Ahmed Butt dead.
The Army and the J&K police had claimed that Kamran Bhai alias Fahad was a “trusted aide” of the JeM chief Moulana Masood Azhar whereas Ghazi Rasheed alias Luqman was known to be an IED specialist. Both of them were Pakistani nationals. The third militant killed with them was local resident Hilal Ahmed.
The 18-hour-long gunfight had also left a trail of smouldering homes. The locals had alleged that after killing two holed up militants the security forces torched a couple of residential houses in their final assault on their third accomplice as he was changing his position between the cluster of houses, making it difficult for the former to neutralise him. But the Army has maintained that the private houses caught fire in exchange of fire and that all the three militants were holed up in one of these houses initially.
Major Dhoundiyal, a resident of Dangwal village of Dehradun, had joined the Army in 2011.