Colonel killed in Uri encounter

“The officer engaged militants in firing and was injured. He later succumbed to his injuries,” Mathur said. Four militants were also killed in the encounter but Mathur said the Army had not found their bodies. “The operation is still going on near Khanda Nar,” he said. “More militants have taken refuge in a nearby forest.”

Col Vasant is the second Commanding Officer to have been killed in an encounter in the last seven months. On December 23 last year, Colonel Gurbir Singh Sarna of 29 RR was killed in village Chak Behrampora in an encounter.

The body of Col Vasant was sent to Bangalore in a special aircraft this afternoon, Mathur said. In Bangalore, hours before Col Vasant’s body was to arrive here, his family was in deep shock. While his two young children — Rukmini, 10, and Yashoda, 7 — played outside the house, their mother, 35-year-old Subhashini Vasant, remained indoors.

At the residence of Colonel Vasant’s elderly parents, three kms from his wife’s home, there was a deafening silence. The parents, the Venugopals who are in their early 70s, had lost their younger son to pneumonia two years ago. And now their only other child is gone at the young age of 40. He had become a Colonel only six months ago. “He had called the night before and spoken to Subha,” said Col’s aunt.