For Raghuraman’s wife Lata Kumari (26), who shifted recently from London — where she was working — to be near her husband when the baby’s born, the news was unbelievable. The young officer had just visited the Capital two weeks ago to make sure that she was comfortably settled down in Noida. He had already applied for leave from his unit in anticipation of the birth of their first child.

Within hours of the news trickling in from Srinagar, relatives moved her to an uncle’s home in New Delhi. “She is not in a state to talk. All of us are still too traumatized about what happened. We need some time alone,” a close relative said.

And in Hyderabad, Vinay’s father K R Prabhakar, mother Jayanti and elder brother Vikram were in a state of shock after the news was broken to them. They had been waiting for him ever since he told them his leave had been sanctioned for the October 29 wedding in Bangalore.

The bodies of Vinay and Raman will be flown by a special aircraft to Hyderabad and Delhi respectively on Thursday morning. They will be cremated with full military honours.

The two were killed in an encounter with militants who crossed over from the LoC. Army sources say that nine militants, all foreigners, were gunned down.