Lt-Col Jha's death brings back memories

Bhopal, Dec 4: It was a cruel replay engineered by destiny but soaked in blood and tears as the body of Lieutenant-Colonel Pankaj Jha being loaded onto a military truck at the local airport brought back memories of Lt Sushmita Chakraborty who was also an officer who hailed from this city and allegedly committed suicide on June 15 this year.

Rashtriya Rifles (RR) officer Lt-Col Jha allegedly shot himself on Friday at 15 Sector RR Headquarters at Mahore in Jammu and Kashmir's Udhampur district.

Headquarters Northern Command Udhampur was the scene of the demise of Lt Chakraborty, who was attached to the Army Services Corps 5071 Battalion. ''I favour an inquiry by an independent agency into the episode,'' her uncle S K Chakraborty had told UNI.

Though the Army has already ordered an inquiry into the December 1 incident, Lt-Col Jha's elder brother Sanjay favours an independent investigation --by a central agency such as the CBI -- into his sibling's demise.

''Even for a highly-technological Army, low-intensity conflict proves a taxing exercise as the fight is against an unknown and unidentified foe even as the officers and men are left with little time for rest and recuperation. There is also the pressure of being away from the family,'' Brigadier (Retd) S Dasgupta, who saw active service during the extremism years in Punjab and also in the Northeast, told UNI.

While speaking to UNI at his Tulsi Nagar residence here, a distraught Sanjay Jha points to the different versions about the type of weapon involved, the fact that his brother seemed under pressure during his October visit home, different sources giving varying times for the ''suicide'' and the delay in conveying the body here.

UNI