Deep Agarwal was eagerly waiting for November 30, the day he would have seen his classmate from school Avinav Verma in full ceremonial regalia during his Passing-Out-Parade from National Defence Academy (NDA), Pune. All that changed on Monday when he came to know that Verma and his batchmate A.V. Bisaria were swept away by flash floods during a map reading and navigation exercise at Donje village, situated at the base of Sinhagad Fort. As the search operation for the two Gentleman Cadets go on in Pune, Verma’s friends and teachers in Allahabad are keeping their fingers crossed.

‘‘I last spoke to him this Sunday and he said everything was fine. He also wanted me to confirm whether I was coming to Pune for the POP in November,’’ said Aggarwal, a third-year B.Com student in Allahabad University, told The Indian Express on telephone. In fact, it was during his last trip home in June that Verma asked Agarwal and his other friends to come and watch him in his dress colours in November. As a sixth termer in the Golf Squadron, Verma was just months away from graduating from NDA.

As a student of Maharshi Patanjali Vidya Mandir, Allahabad, Verma was known to be an intelligent boy, who made no secret of his desire to join the Armed Forces. ‘‘He did not make it in the first attempt. So Avinav joined an engineering coaching class in Allahabad with me. He made it in his second attempt and went to Pune,’’ remembers classmate Anshul Mishra, a third year engineering student now based in Gorakhpur.

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