The nation salutes this 25-yr-old-Kargil martyr’s mother.-told her son to refuse a free uniform

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Capt Haneef Uddin, a 25-year-old Kargil martyr, died from multiple bullet wounds with his body lying in the freezing heights of Turtuk for more than 40 days. 

When the then Army Chief Gen VP Malik had told his classical singer mother, Mrs Hema Aziz that Haneef’s body was still there because the enemy was firing constantly, she had told him she did not want another soldier to die while trying to retrieve her son’s body.

She had brought up her sons as a single mother after Haneef’s father died when he was eight and had refused the petrol pump that was offered to her after Haneef’s death just as she had told her son to refuse a free uniform he had been offered in school many years back because he did not have a father. "Tell your teacher, my mother works and she can afford to buy my uniform,” she had said.

The brave soldiers who lost their lives for this country (527 in Kargil alone) were Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis, and Hindus but we never noticed because for us they were all soldiers. And they went to fight for us because they apparently never noticed either. They were all Indians. Capt Haneef Uddin was serving with the 11 Rajputana Rifles when he died. His war cry was ‘Raja Ram Chandra Ki Jai’.

Haneef’s younger brother Sameer Uddin, also a musician, had said in his own social media post, sharing Haneef’s story: “Stories of bravery are shrouded with pain and loss. Such stories wouldn't need to be told in the first place if humans were not divided by borders, caste, class, or religion.”