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“He has become a file and that file has been forgotten by the government”, laments Chinda Dhondu Patil, the 70-year-old grandfather of the 22-year-old Chandu Chavan, a sepoy with the 37 Rashtriya Rifles posted in Mendhar sector of the Line of Control, who, as per the Ministry of Defence, “inadvertently crossed” the LoC and ended up being captured by the Pakistan army more than two months ago. Patil lost his wife after she suffered a cardiac arrest on hearing the news of Chandu’s capture.
Chandu strayed to the other side of the LoC in the last week sometime in the last week of September.
“We have not received any official communication from the Ministry of Defence, despite getting in touch with them over and over again, as to what happened with Chandu that night. No one has been in touch with us. We are doing things from our end. How could he just walk into Pakistan when there are land mines all over? Did the patrolling party of which he was a part of forget him when they returned from the patrolling? Did he lose his way and was captured? If he had a fight with his seniors and crossed the LoC inadvertently, why didn’t anyone try to stop him?” a close relative of Chandu said.
The family member confirmed that Chandu was not a part of the team that had carried out the surgical strike on the night of 28-29 September. “There are procedures to get to the truth of such things in the Army like how he went across, why he went across, where his ‘buddy’ was at that time. The Army should let us know about this,” he added.
This newspaper sent detailed questionnaires and texts to Colonel Abhijit Mitra, Director (Media), Integrated HQ of MoD (Army) and Nitin Wakankar, spokesperson MoD, on the issue, but did not receive a reply. Text messages sent to Subhash Bamre, Minister of state for Defence, who incidentally is an MP from Dhule, Maharashtra, Chandu Chavan’s native place, too did not elicit any response.
The family members of Chandu Chavan say that they cannot do much because his brother is in the Army too and antagonising the senior officials might hurt the career of his brother.
“We cannot say anything as his brother too is in the Army. He was in New Delhi last week to seek information about Chandu and he was directed to meet an official in the Ministry of External Affairs (Soumya C., who is an undersecretary in the Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran division). The official said that they have an internal mechanism for such things and are following up with Pakistan on the issue. They stated that just like us, they too were getting information on Chandu from TV news. We have written to the Prime Minister, the Defence Minister and the External Affairs Minister but nothing concrete has emerged. It seems that the whole country has forgotten a soldier,” the family member said.
The family members tried to contact the officials of 37 RR, which Chandu had joined two months before being captured, but no one was willing to talk to them.
“His brother is posted in Jamnagar, Gujarat. He had asked for posting in New Delhi so that he could follow the case more diligently, but they refused to transfer him. We are a poor family and we cannot ask his brother to leave his job. Please ask them what they are doing about Chandu, please,” the family member pleaded.
When contacted, Bhusan Chavan, Chandu’s younger brother, said that he just wants to speak to him for two minutes to make sure that he is all right. “I want to assure him that everything is being done to get him back. I am scared that he might do something or something might happen to him,” he said. Bhushan is presently with the Maratha Light Infantry and is posted in Jamnagar, Gujarat.