Bangalore's Major Mohan Gangadharan, (38), of the Bengal Engineer Group, 59 engineering regiment, stationed at Naugong in Assam, was killed in an encounter with the ULFA militants on Tuesday.

On that fateful day, Mohan had flagged down three men on a motorcycle when the pillion rider opened fire with an AK-47. He was hit by a bullet on his hand. Ignoring the injury, the Major retaliated with his gun. The Major's bullets killed two of the militants on the spot. However, before one of the militants died, a shot from his bullet hit Mohan's chest and it was instant death for him. The third militant managed to escape.

On Thursday evening, a special aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) brought his body to the city. The body has been kept at the Air Force Command Hospital mortuary.

Mohan's military familyat Benson Town in the city, has accepted his death bravely. One of Mohan's elder brothers Lt Col Keshav Gangadharan is at Jhansi while another one, who would have also been a military man but for his health, is employed in the State Bank of India, Bangalore.

Their father recollects, among the three, Mohan was a topper all through his life. He always stood first at the Bengal Engineering Centre at Rourkee. Besides being a champion basketball player, a swimming champion and a coach, he was the best sharp-shooter of the regiment in the Army, said Col P Madhavan, Mohan's co-brother. He had got into the Army on a direct recruitment through the Indian Military Academy.

Mohan had married P G Nair's daughter, Ranjini, and had a two-year-old daughter Nayanthara.

Says a grieving Nair, "My daughter was living with him in Rourkee until he got transferred to Assam border. He was to have come to Bangalore in about ten days to take his family along."

Bangalore-based MEG Centre's Major R Premachandran said as theBengal regiment did not have its centre in Bangalore, his centre would perform the last rites complete with military honours.