Thousands of people bade a tearful farewell to Major Kunal Gosavi on Thursday, as he was cremated with military honours in his home village of Whakri in Pandharpur taluka of Solapur district in western Maharashtra, two days after he was martyred in the Nagrota terror attack.
The body of Gosavi, who was among the two officers and five soldiers killed in a terrorist attack on an Army unit in Jammu & Kashmir’s Nagrota on Tuesday, had been brought to his village from Pune earlier in the morning.
The body was kept initially kept at his Dalgalli residence in Wakri village to facilitate local people pay their last respects to him.
later, Major Gosavi’s body was taken to the funeral ground in a procession. With military personnel doing honours, thousands of people from Wakri and neighbouring village joined the martyred officer’s final journey.
The slogans like “Amar rahe amar rahe Shaheed Major Kunal Gosavi amar rahe”, “Bharat Mata ki jai” and “Veer Jawan Tuje Salam” rent the air, as Major Gosavi’s five-year-old daughter Umang lit the funeral pyre. The martyred soldier’s wife Uma was among other near and dear ones present at the funeral.
District Guardian Minister Vijaykumar Deshmukh, MlAs Prashant Paricharak Bharat Bhalke and Solapur District Collector Ranjitkumar were among others present on the occasion.
Born in Pandharpur, Major Gosavi did his initial schooling in his home district of Solapur. In 2001, Major Gosavi moved to Pune where he did his HSC and later graduated in Commerce from Brihan Maharashtra College of Commerce (BMCC) in 2005. He joined the Indian Army in 2006.
Attached to the 166 Medium Regiment, Major Gosavi had been on a month’s leave before joining duty just three days before the attack.
Major Gosavi was among two soldiers from Maharashtra who fell to terrorists’ bullets in the Nagrota attack. The other martyred soldier from the state was lance Naik Sambhaji Kadam (35) of Jana village in Nanded district of Marathwada region
Meanwhile, Kadam’s body arrived in his native village on Thursday night. His funeral was expected to take place either later in the night or on Friday morning.