J&K: Gloom in Pulwama village after CRPF soldier Naseer Rather killed

As soon as the dawn cracked, a throng of mourners streamed into the south kashmir's Naira village in militancy-ridden Pulwama district to attend the last rites of Naseer Ahmad Rather.

Rather, a CRPF soldier, was killed by suspected militants on late Sunday evening.

While the doleful wails of women mourners emanated from the tent pitched just in front of the two-storeyed withered house of Rather, his restless father Wali Mohammad, sitting in the centre of one of the uncluttered rooms, narrated how his son was killed with words sticking his throat:

"Three armed men barged into our house around 9 pm on Saturday and asked for food. As we laid out the table cloth they hurriedly stood up and started piling out, asking my son to accompany them to a nearby village," said Mohammad.

He said that as Rather wore his shoes to accompany them, his young wife Nelofar, sensing trouble, also insisted to go along with her husband.

"After just five minutes, we heard the loud bang of guns," said his father.

With puffy and blodshot eyes, Nelofar said in a feeble voice that as they reached near an alley, barely a few doors down their home, the armed men shoved her and fired a volley of bullets into her husband.

"....And then i did not know what happened. People say he died. Is he really no more? Where have they kept him?" asks Nelofer. Amidst this, her three-year-old son is shedding tears continuously.

"He is rather oblivious about the death of his father but there is something that makes him to cry so much," said one of the family members while rocking the kid in his  lap.

Before his posting at Pulwama, Rather, according to his family, had served in Chhattisgarh for six years. On much insistence from his family, Rather had got himself transferred to valley few years ago.

"In Rather, I lost a dear friend and a brother," said one of Rather's colleagues while letting out a howl of pain and anguish.

Hundreds of people,  including some of his colleagues in CRPF,  from the adjoining and far-off places attended the funeral prayers of Rather before he was interred in his ancestral grave yard.