Poonch ambush martyr Chandan Kumar’s body will finally arrive in Nawada district of Bihar on Monday after high drama. His family and fellow villagers blocked a national highway (NH) to demand the body back, alleging that the army was insisting on performing his last rites in Jammu and Kashmir.

What irked the slain soldier’s family was that the army was not willing to tell them the reasons for wanting to cremate the body in a faraway land instead of sending it home.

Chandan’s kin and residents of Naromurar village blocked Patna-Ranchi NH-20 in protest on Saturday evening. Carrying national flags and sticks in their hands, they shouted slogans in favour of their demand. The blockade continued till around midnight, disrupting traffic on the busy route. It was lifted after the district administration officials assured that they would take up the issue with the army.

“My younger brother sacrificed his life for the country and here we have to block roads to get his body back. So much time has passed and we are yet to receive his mortal remains. Just think about the mental condition of his wife and us,” Chandan’s elder brother Abhinandan Kumar said.

“The army officials were assuring us that they would send his body back once the post-mortem was conducted but on Saturday, they started saying that they would send a special aircraft to Bodh Gaya and insisted that we should board it and come to Jammu and Kashmir to perform the last rites. We asked the reason, but they asked to understand the situation as it was a high-profile matter. We rejected this,” Abhinandan added.

Chandan’s wife and parents have been weeping since the day they got information about the incident.

“Just send back my husband. I do not have any demand, just send his body back. I have no information of what is happening,” wailed the slain soldier’s wife Shilpi Kumari.

The army officially released the names of the four martyred soldiers on Sunday, four days after militants killed them in an ambush in Poonch. Chandan, who served as a rifleman, was one of them. He had joined the army in 2017 and got married in May 2022.

Sources said that the attackers mutilated the bodies of the dead army personnel. A wreath-laying ceremony was held at Rajouri in which senior officers paid floral tributes to them.

Asked about the entire issue, Nawada district magistrate Ashutosh Kumar Verma told The Telegraph that the army officers conveyed to him late on Sunday afternoon that Chandan’s body was being sent to his native place.

“Chandan’s body will arrive around 10am at the Gaya international airport from Jammu. It will be then brought to Nawada and taken to Chandan’s village. A procession with the martyr’s body will be taken out and it will be cremated at the place where his family wants,” Verma told this newspaper.