Till night before, senior J&K official was handling border relief. Saturday morning, he was dead from shelling

Sources said that around 5.10 am on Saturday, when the cross-border shelling resumed, a senior officer rang Thappa to enquire about his well-being. The ADDC told him he was busy preparing an evacuation plan for the border residents. Around the same time roughly, a shell hit a window of Thappa’s official residence, and splinters struck him in the head and back.

Rajouri ADDC Raj Kumar Thappa

Ashiq Rafiq Malik, District Information Officer, Rajouri, who lives in the same complex as the ADDC’s residence, said Thappa was walking down a lobby when struck, and appeared to be getting ready to leave for work.

“Around 10.05 pm on Friday, he had forwarded a tweet by Union Minister of State Dr Jitendra Singh on the arrangement of additional hospital beds, and asked me to share it further,” said Malik.

This was already at the end of a very busy day, when Thappa had first accompanied Deputy Chief Minister Surinder Choudhary on a visit to camps set up at Thandikassi for people evacuated from border areas and to GMC Hospital, where people injured in Pakistani shelling are admitted.

After that, Thappa made arrangements for a high-level meeting to be chaired by Choudhary with the district administration and prominent civil society members to discuss public safety measures and seek suggestions regarding evacuation and rehabilitation of the population affected by cross-border shelling. At the meeting, he also briefed those present on the steps taken by the Rajouri district administration for the same.

In the evening, Thappa participated in a video-conference held by CM Abdullah to assess the ongoing relief measures and the evacuation of civilians across border districts.

Until 10 pm, Thappa was busy finalising arrangements to set up a special ward with 50 additional hospital beds at the local Government Medical College Hospital, for the injured in Pakistani shelling.

The long hours were no surprise when it came to Thappa, as per Malik, who described him as a “bold officer” and a “workaholic”, always available for people in need.

A colleague recalled that having played a key role in the conduct of the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Rajouri district last year, Thappa would joke that he missed the excitement of the extra work during the polls.

Another official said Thappa was known to always stand by his subordinate staff, giving the example of an incident from Friday afternoon, when he insisted on occupying the second row, where his officials sat, at a meeting with the Deputy CM. Choudhary finally ensured that his supporters vacated the front row which they had occupied, so that Thappa and his officials could move there.

The post of ADDC was specifically created to have a dedicated officer in the district administration to take care of development works, and hence ADDCs do not have much public dealing. However, officials said, Thappa was an exception, being very active and well-connected with the people of Rajouri.

Recently, he was among the first officials to visit Badhaal village after the mysterious deaths reported from there, with 17 people dying over a month-and-a-half.

Thappa, who was himself a 1989-batch MBBS graduate from Government Medical College, Jammu, is survived by his wife, a doctor, and two children.