No ‘official’ tears for IAF hero

District Collector S C Bhat is surprised at the outcry. ‘‘Since it was not a battle casualty, according to the rules, we are not supposed to receive the body or anything. I received no order from the government to do so. Unka kuch plane ka maamla tha (something had happened to him in a plane).’’

District Sainik Welfare Officer, Lt Col Vijay Chowdhury: ‘‘I attended the cremation purely out of courtesy, but since he did not die in battle, we were not required to extend any honour.’’

Thus on Sunday evening, only members of Bundela’s family, IAF personnel and residents of Baggar watched on as his body was cremated. There was a sudden rain shower as the body arrived in drought-stricken Baggar, 13 kms from Jhunjhunu district, which, said residents, was a sign from the heavens.

‘‘When the helicopter landed here with his body, not a single police official was present,’’ local corporator Khairati Ram Bundela told The Indian Express. ‘‘I had to burn a tyre and wave my arms to signal the chopper to land. The Air Force officers were shocked by the absence of any official.’’

In Bundela’s dilapidated family haveli, rage mingled with grief at the death of one so young and so brave. ‘‘The whole administration turned out for Kargil martyrs. But there was no respect for the man who brought victory to India,’’ said residents. For a district which boasts of 64 war heroes since April 1999, the contempt shown for its only Air Force martyr is surprising, they said.

The residents say they will register a formal protest and, in the absence of any formal tribute—after all, the rules don’t permit it— re-christen one of the municipality’s 21 schools after him.

When Bundela shot down the Atlantique over Gujarat on August 11 three years ago, residents organised a mammoth reception when he returned home. ‘‘Ek number ka bahadur tha. Even before ejecting (from the MiG-21) in Jodhpur, he took care not to crash on a school underneath, preferring to endanger his own life instead,’’ said a village schoolteacher.

Bundela was the only earning member of his family, and his 75-year-old mother, Laxmi Devi, worried over the fate of her other two unemployed sons, Moti (27) and Rakesh (25). Their father, Bhagirath Mal Bundela, who was an Assistant Engineer with the PWD, died at the age of 39, and Prashant had carried the family’s financial responsibilities on his young shoulders ever since.

His brother in-law, Yogesh Khinchi, said, ‘‘His father wanted him to be a fighter pilot since there’s nobody from the air force in this district. But he died before Prashant joined the NDA.’’

‘‘For us he was our father,’’ added Prashant’s sister, Anita. ‘‘He would talk to my brothers every week and guide them. He never let us feel the loss of our father.’’

For Bundela’s 28-year-old wife Meera, his death came when it was least expected. ‘‘Fifteen days ago, he had begun taking in food orally after being on a tube for months. His will power and fighting spirit remained intact,’’ she said as she nursed her six-month-old daughter, Priya.

The older daughter, three-year-old Prachi, has been sent to Jaipur. ‘‘She and her father were inseparable. We haven’t told her that he has died, but she keeps saying, ‘Mere Papa dabba mein hain (my father is in a box) because she saw him in the coffin.’’

Her regret is that authorities at the Command Hospital in Pune couldn’t get a wheelchair and portable ventilator for her husband. ‘‘A doctor in the US had advised us to get it, she told us that if Prashant saw the outside world, he might recover. He too had been repeatedly expressing a desire to go outside.’’