Defence veterans want MoD to define ‘martyr’

In an RTI reply sent to the Ministry of Defence has said that ‘the term Martyr is not being used in the Indian Army.

those dead as martyrs, even if they had lost their lives due to sickness or accidents in the field area. In the public mind, a martyr is worthy of special respect for a special act he has done. I find no reason why the Army cannot introduce a new terminology, instead of calling all deaths as casualty in Battle or Physical. A Martyr status holds great respect for the person who laid down his life defending the country from the enemy on the first line of action,” Colonel (Retd.) Thapar added.

General (Retd.) S.P. Sinha also raised concerns on why the Indian Army has not yet been able to define the term “Martyr” in military lexicon.

Speaking to The Sunday Guardian, he said, “A Martyr is a fauji (soldier) who laid down his life for the country and the government needs to define the term in its official record. The Army should also maintain a record of all martyrs so that each family gets its due in time. I also think that the definition should be passed by the government in Parliament as an Act of Parliament.”

General (Retd.) G.D. Bak- shi thinks that “martyr” is just a colloquial English term and is not a word used in military lexicon.

“Until all due is given to the person who has died defending his country, how does it matter whether we define martyr or not? A soldier who lays down his life for the country is anyway a martyr in the minds of the people and there is a proper standard operating procedure followed in the Army where due respect and state honours are given to the person who has laid down his life fighting the enemy.”

In the RTI reply to The Sunday Guardian, the Indian Air Force said that an exgratia of Rs 25 lakh, Rs 35 lakh, and Rs 45 lakh is given to the next of kin of the deceased personnel who died while performing bonafide official duty, killed in action by militants, terrorists, extremists or sea pirates or international war.

However, according to the RTI reply, the Indian Air Force does not have a separate provision of providing jobs to dependents of Indian Air Force personnel killed in action. Though almost 20,000 lives are lost in the country annually in hit and run cases, conviction in such cases remains at a bleak 25-30%, due to a lack of evidence and eyewitnesses in such cases, according to experts.

In the last three years, between 2013 and 2015, the country has seen over 155,000 cases of hit and run in the country in which over 55,000 people have lost their lives and about 135,000 people left grievously injured, according to data from the Transport Research Wing, Ministry of Road Transport and Highway.

Delhi has been one of the most notorious cities in terms of the volume of hit and run cases in India, as the national capital registered over 2,000 deaths in hit and run cases between 2013 and 2015 and over 3,500 cases of hit and run during the same period, according to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways data. However, data for the number of accidents in 2014 in Delhi has not been provided by the Ministry.

Some of the most infamous hit and run cases in DelhiNCR include the Mercedes hit and run case in which 32-year-old Siddharth Sharma lost his life last year and Santosh Kohli’s hit and run case in 2013. Kohli was the Aam Aadmi Party candidate during the 2013 Vidhan Sabha election. Sunita Narain, Director of the Centre for Science and Environment, was left injured after a car hit her from behind on the AIIMS flyover in South Delhi. Most recently, Vanita Garg, a young girl, was crushed under the wheels of a car that hit her while she was crossing the road near the Max hospital in Saket. All these cases are yet to reach conclusion.

Siddharth Sharma’s father, Hemraj Sharma, is still