‘Country waiting for justice… punish culprits so that no one dares to raise an eye towards India’: Rahul Gandhi meets Pahalgam victim Lt Vinay Narwal’s family in Karnal

“I met the bereaved family of Lieutenant Vinay Narwal ji, who was martyred in the Pahalgam attack, shared their grief and consoled them. Their courage and bravery even in the face of immense grief is a message for the country — we have to remain united. The entire country stands with the families of the martyrs. The government has the full support of the opposition — the culprits should be punished in such a way that no one dares to raise an eye towards India. Today, along with the victim families, the entire country is waiting for justice,” he said in a post on X.

Earlier, Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, accompanied by party’s Haryana in-charge B K Hariprasad, reached Karnal in the afternoon. Haryana Congress chief

Udai Bhan, party’s Rohtak MP Deepender Singh Hooda and party leader Divyanshu Budhiraja were also present when Gandhi arrived.

Gandhi met spoke with Lt Narwal’s wife Himanshi, father Rajesh Kumar, mother Asha Devi, sister Srishti, and grandfather Hawa Singh. Gandhi spent more than one-and-a-half hours with Narwal’s family but did not talk to the reporters who were waiting outside.

Speaking to reporters, Hooda later said, “Rahulji spoke with the family members of Lt Narwal and offered his condolences to the bereaved family. What they spoke isn’t to be disclosed to the media… We lost a son, a brave soldier of our nation, and the government should take stern action against the terrorists and perpetrators of this terror attack.”

The BJP government in Haryana had recently announced financial assistance of Rs 50 lakh to the family and a government job to one of its members. Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, his Cabinet colleagues, and several senior BJP leaders had attended the cremation of Lt Narwal at his native village in Karnal.

Lt Narwal and his wife Himanshi got married just seven days before the terrorist attack in Pahalgam and had arrived in Jammu and Kashmir for their honeymoon on April 21. A video of Himanshi was the first clip to go viral on social media platforms after the attack on April 22. In it, she said the terrorists asked tourists about their religion before shooting them dead.

Lt Narwal was posted in Kochi and had come home on leave on March 28 ahead of his wedding in Mussoorie on April 19. On April 20, after holding a reception in Karnal, the couple went to Himanshi’s residence in Gurgaon from where they boarded the flight to Srinagar on April 21. On May 1, when Lt Narwal would have turned 27, his family organised blood donation camps across Karnal in his memory.