Last salute Gen. Rawat

As a priest chanted Sanskrit shlokas, the 17-gun salute rang out and the twin pyres of the General & his wife were lit

New Delhi: The plaintive strains of bugles sounding the last post broke through the hush, men in uniform clicked their heels and a 17-gun salute rang out as Gen Bipin Rawat and his wife were cremated on Friday evening, the sun setting on a day written into India’s military history and on the life of its most senior military officer.

India’s first chief of defence staff (CDS) and his wife Madhulika Rawat were given a send-off with full military honours at the Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment, two days after they were killed with 11 others, all from the armed forces, in a helicopter crash in Coonoor, Tamil Nadu.

As millions watched on television and hundreds packed into Brar Square, the couple’s two daughters Tarini and Kritika conducted the last rites of their parents, taken away from them so brutally.

On a day of barely held back tears framed by the solemnity of the formal pageantry of a triservices ceremony, thoughts were also with the families of those whose last rites could not take place because their bodies are at the Army Base Hospital awaiting identification. —(PTI)