Kolkata: Grief and anger marked the mood in the villages of two soldiers from West Bengal who were killed in a clash with Chinese troops in Ladakh's Galwan Valley, as the villagers waited for the mortal remains to arrive on Friday.
An Army spokesperson said the mortal remains of Sepoy Rajesh Orang and Havildar Bipul Roy would be kept in the mortuary of the military hospitals at Panagarh and Hasimara respectively for the day and taken to their homes on Friday morning by road.
Amid a pall of gloom in the rain-soaked Bindipara village in Alipurduar, the kitchen in every household was closed as the women stayed away from cooking in remembrance of their beloved Bipul, whom they had seen grow up from childhood.
A stage was hurriedly built by Roy's friends and other villagers for laying the casket when it arrives in this north Bengal hamlet amid forests and tea gardens.
Hundreds of kilometres away at Belgoria village in Birbhum district, relatives, friends and those who knew him a little or not, came over to Orang's small hutment to pay their last respects, while calling for a befitting reply to China for the brutal attack on Indian Army personnel.
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Members of Orang's family were too grief-stricken to say much as a minister of the Mamata Banerjee government, Ashish Banerjee, visited their house in the morning.
The casket carrying Orang's body reached Panagarh by a military aircraft on Thursday. The mortal remains would be taken to his home in Belgoria by road on Friday, the Army spokesperson said.
Roy's mortal remains would also be transported to his native village from Hasimara on Friday, he added.
PTI
