Commando Anil Kumar Chauhan, of the 1 Para, was a 29-year-old man of very few words.

On his return home to this Himachal village from Mumbai where he was part of the NSG team deployed at Nariman House, Chauhan stayed for six days and yet he rarely talked about what happened those 60 hours fighting the Lashkar-e-Toiba. And now, says his father Gyan Chand, that he has returned as a martyr after being killed on March 21 fighting the Lashkar in Kupwara — in the biggest infiltration attempt across the LoC this year — there’s “no one to tell us the story of his valour.”

“You will be surprised to know he didn’t even tell us he was in Mumbai until we saw him very briefly on a TV channel,” says Chand, formerly with the BSF. “All of us kept watching TV hoping we would get another glimpse but it was only when he returned to Delhi that he told us he was there.”

It was on Monday that the Lance Naik’s body arrived in this village, 13 km from Hamirpur town, wrapped in the Tricolour. This was his second stint in the Valley after 2006 when he was selected for para-commando training at Agra and sent to the NSG on deputation.

The last his father heard from him was on March 19 when Chauhan called up to ask about his 2-year-old son Ashish — whether the child could make out the father’s voice. “Then we heard nothing until they told us he had made the supreme sacrifice battling against enemies of the country,” says the father.

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