Chandigarh: Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday met the family members of Navy officer Lt Vinay Narwal, who was killed in the terrorist attack in Pahalgam.
Accompanied by senior Congress leader B K Hariprasad, who is the party’s Haryana affairs in-charge, the LoP reached Karnal in Haryana in the afternoon.
Haryana Congress chief Udai Bhan, Congress’s Rohtak MP Deepender Singh Hooda, and party leader Divyanshu Budhiraja were also present when Gandhi arrived.
Gandhi met the bereaved family members at the house in Haryana’s Karnal at 12.30 pm and left at around 2.15 pm. He spoke with Lt Narwal’s wife, Himanshi, father Rajesh Kumar, mother Asha Devi, sister R Srishti, and grandfather, Hawa Singh.
Congress’s Rohtak MP Deepender Hooda and state president Udai Bhan were present at Lt Narwal’s residence when Gandhi arrived. A large number of people and reporters gathered outside the house, but Gandhi did not reply to queries from the media.
Speaking to reporters, Hooda said, “Rahul-ji spoke with the family members of our beloved Lt Vinay 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.
