Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 11

An elderly couple in their 70s have undertaken an emergency 2,100-km road trip from New Delhi to Bengaluru to “see” their dead son one last time.

The body of Colonel Navjot Singh Bal from the 2 Para Special Forces is at a morgue of a military hospital in Bengaluru, where he died of cancer on April 9.

Colonel Bal’s parents — Lt Col KS Bal (retd) and Ramninder Kaur — set off from Gurugram on April 10 on the long road trip.

“The cremation of Bal, 39, is held up,” a ‘Para-SF’ mate of Col Bal told The Tribune. The Colonel is survived by his wife and two sons — aged 8 and 4 years. Aarti, wife of the Colonel, awaits her in-laws for the last rites of her husband.

With no commercial flights or trains available, the family was given the option of transporting the Colonel’s body on a military aircraft to Delhi. However, the family insisted on cremation at Bengaluru, Army officials confirmed.

The option was explored if the couple could be flown to Bengaluru in a military plane. However, owing to confusion at several levels, including in the Ministry of Defence and the military establishment, the Bals could not be accommodated on a military flight from Palam (New Delhi) to Bengaluru on April 10.

Sources said Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, acting on a request from the office of Chief of Defence Staff, permitted the Bals to be accommodated on a C-17 transport plane of the IAF on April 10.

Since the flight was requisitioned by the MHA, someone in the military establishment thought it was better to take a ‘sanction’ from the MHA. The MHA telephonically gave its go-ahead. The military establishment, however, insisted on a ‘written sanction’. The MHA told officials coordinating the flight that a request for such a sanction needn’t even come to it. There is no rule for the MHA to allow or deny permission for military planes or passengers on board such planes.

Sources said the telephonic nod from the MHA should have been noted and orders passed accordingly, given the unprecedented situation in the country. The Bals were also willing to pay for the journey. In places such as Leh, civilians are often ferried to Chandigarh aboard military planes during winter when there are no flights.

An official said a matter that should have ended at the table of the Joint Secretary (Air) in the MoD had turned into one of blame game. Retired veterans are blaming the ‘babus’ in the MoD and MHA, without realising the fault was at multiple levels, including within the military.

Mates raise 22 lakh

On the night of April 9-10 when MoD officials were busy going through the rule book, Colonel Bal’s mates from Para-SF collected Rs22 lakh to ferry parents by helicopter from Delhi and Bengaluru airports. However, it couldn’t materialise as they embarked on a road trip