Can we give them back their Home & Honour

The two soldiers from 108 Engineer Regiment, which was engaged in de-mining operations after the guns fell silent in Kargil, disappeared after being despatched to their unit headquarters on September 17, 1999.

An official regimental report, accessed by The Sunday Express, proclaims them as ‘‘deserters/away without leave,’’ and claims that they were sighted ‘‘by unit personnel on September 19.’’

That wasn’t accurate.

Pak authorities are now said to have acknowledged that Jagsir and Arif have been in their custody since September 17, 1999, the day of their disappearance. And Islamabad is willing to free them in exchange for three Pakistani civilians and one soldier, now in Indian jails.

‘‘We are working on a war footing to repatriate these two soldiers,’’ the Army’s official spokesman, Major Gen Deepak Summanwar, told The Sunday Express tonight.

Jagsir and Arif may cross the Wagah border soon, to return to what remains of their families. One man has lost a father and another a mother—each parent protesting to the end that their son was innocent. One’s wife has remarried another’s refuses to say if she will return.

The Sunday Express travelled to their hometowns to record the stories of the two families.

LANCE NAIK JAGSIR SINGH:
My brother wants me to remarry, says the waiting wife

Kuldeep is four years old but she spreads the fingers on her palm to insist that she is really five. That, of course, can’t be true because Kuldeep has never seen her father—and Jagsir went missing slightly less than five years ago.

Kuldeep was born in November 1999, two months after her father Jagsir was captured. By that time, he had already been declared a deserter and the local police had already called on the family’s one-room hovel on the edge of Kotbhai village in Muktsar to make sure he was not hiding there. Unable to face the shame and the uncertainty, Kuldeep’s mother, Jaswinder, packed her bags and left for her own family home just days after the girl was born. Kuldeep grew up in poverty, with a laminated picture of Jagsir in uniform the only decoration in the room. She is proud of the father she has never seen.

Gurdev, Jagsir’s father, fought till the end to clear his son’s name. He wrote to the Prime Minister and to the Chief of Army Staff. He badgered Jagsir’s Regiment. All he got was the stock reply: ‘‘Missing since September 17, 1999, sighted by unit personnel on September 19, 1999’’ — hence a deserter. That inaccuracy has now been corrected but it came too late for Gurdev, who died a few months back. Since then, his wife, Chhoto, 60, has been bringing up Kuldeep. ‘‘Why would he desert?’’ asks a tired Chhoto. ‘‘He had served 10 years and had everything to come back to.’’ When The Sunday Express asked to meet her daughter-in-law, Jagsir’s wife, who lives 45 km away. Chhoto was reluctant, because she had no money for the return journey. Assured that she would be dropped back, Chhoto made the trip and hugged Jaswinder with genuine warmth.

But there was an undercurrent of tension as Jaswinder’s brother sat close at hand. Jaswinder had known for a couple of months about her husband, but she refuses to say if she will return to his home. ‘‘My brother wants me to remarry,’’ she confides, refusing to say if something has already been settled.

She says goodbye to her daughter with some regret. Four years is a long time.

SAPPER MOHAMMED ARIF:
Brother carries a torn inland letter as proof of loyalty

In early 1999, Sapper Mohammed Arif returned to his village Mundali, in Meerut district, to get married. Ten days later, he was back in Kargil with his regiment.

While his wife, Guddi, waited patiently for months to meet once more the man she barely knew, a stream of reassuring letters from Arif sustained her. On September 15, 1999, he wrote to his family: ‘‘Meri taraf se bilkul bhi phikar na karein. Yahan mein khairiyat se hoon (Don’t worry about me. I am well).’’

That was two days before he was captured. The tattered, army postal inland has been carefully preserved by Arif’s brother, Abdul Hamid, almost like an article of faith.

‘‘See the date,’’ says Hamid, as he thrusts it into your hands. He has photocopied the letter many times over and sent it to every official he could think of, as proof that his brother was a loyal soldier, with no intentions of deserting his regiment. No one listened, but such was Hamid’s conviction that even the barely-married Guddi spent four years, waiting for news about Arif. Four years is a long time to wait for a man you have known for just ten days.

Finally, last year, the family had to make some hard decisions. Guddi was still young and there was no word on Arif. With everyone’s consent, she remarried. ‘‘She is in Bulandshahr. Don’t bother her,’’ pleaded Hamid.

Meanwhile, his ammi, Hazra Begum, died last year, still waiting for her son. Hamid earns just a few hundred rupees a month, doing odd-jobs, and he had almost stopped fighting to prove his brother’s innocence when the family got another letter in April.

It confirmed that Arif was alive in Pakistani custody. It also confirmed what Hamid had been saying all along. “Mera bhai bhagoda nahin hai (my brother is not a deserter),” he said. It’s just that when Sapper Mohammed Arif comes home, ammi and Guddi will not be there to receive him.