Srinagar: A man from Maharashtra handed over an urn containing soil collected from the homes of each soldier killed in the Pulwama attack last year to the CRPF on Friday.
The urn was placed at the wreath-laying ceremony at the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) campus in the Lethpora camp here to mark a year of the Pulwama attack, in which 40 personnel of the paramilitary force were killed.
Umesh Gopinath undertook a 61,000-km journey to meet the families of the 40 slain CRPF personnel and collected the soil from their homes.
On February 14 last year, a convoy of vehicles carrying security personnel on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway was attacked by a vehicle-borne suicide bomber at Lethpora in Pulwama district. Forty CRPF personnel were killed in the attack.
“Umesh Gopinath from Maharashtra took a 61,000 Km journey to meet the families of the 40 @crpfindia Martyrs & collected soil from the homes of each Martyr in an Urn. He presented the Urn to CRPF, which was then placed at the Martyrs Column during the wreath laying ceremony,” the paramilitary force said in a tweet.
A memorial to the 40 slain personnel has been set up inside a CRPF camp adjacent to the place where Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) militant Adil Ahmed Dar, driving an explosive-laden car, blew himself up next to a convoy of security forces.
Almost all the conspirators behind the attack have since been killed with the last one being Qari Yasir, chief of JeM, who was killed last month. PTI

Press Trust of India