KULGAM: Seemingly, it is a reincarnation with a twist. The parents of Lt. Col. Shaheed Umar Fayaz, the slain Indian army lieutenant, were blessed with a boy today. They did not think twice and gave him their slain son’s name: Umar Fayaz.
Lt Umar Fayaz
Umer Fayaz Parray, 22, a resident of Sursandu, Kulgam, was kidnapped by suspected militants on May 9, 2017. He had gone to attend the wedding ceremony at his relatives home in Batpora Mantribug when three masked men took him away.
Next morning, he was recovered dead in the bus stand at Herman, a major village – now a tehsil, located between Sadsuna and Mantribug. As the residents drove him to the hospital, the doctor identified him and declared him brought dead.
The 22-year-old Umar Fayaz was survived by his parents Fayaz Parray and Jameela and two sisters. Less than a year after his killing, a brother was born to him. His parents gave the newborn his name: Umar Fayaz.
Umar Fayaz Jr was born in the district hospital Kulgam. Officials confirmed the birth saying the baby and the mother are doing fine. Fayaz, his father, is around.
“Thank God, I have a son whom I gave the name of my beloved son whom I lost,” Fayaz Ahmad Parray, the father of the kid, said. “It was a caesarean delivery. We admitted her to the hospital at 10 am and by 12 noon, the baby was born.”
Jameela, the mother, is being taken care of by her daughter, the younger sister of slain Umar Fayaz. “I had to give up my studies because of my brother,” she said. “I would have completed the graduation, only last year.” Her sister, however, is in the twelfth class.
A student of Navodaya Vidyalaya’s branch that operates from Ashmuquam in South Kashmir, Umer Fayaz He graduated from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi in 2015. He belonged to the 129th batch of cadets from Pune-based National Defence Academy. He was commissioned into the army on December 10, 2016. This was his first time that he proceeded on leave in his short carrier from Akhnoon, where his unit 2-Rajputana Rifles was deployed. He never returned.
Termed to be sports freak because he loved basketball, Fayaz was once expelled from school for playing cards.
The management later retained him on the plea of his father.
Post-2016 unrest, Umar Fayaz has become part of the narrative that Delhi has been building on Kashmir. In September 2017, Ms Paulomi Tripathi, First Secretary at India’s UN mission, showed pictures of Lt Umar Fayaz at UN General Assembly to counter Pakistan argument on Kashmir.
Ms Paulomi Tripathi, First Secretary at India’s UN mission, showing picture of Lt Umar Fayaz at UN General Assembly
“The Permanent Representative of Pakistan (Maleha Lodhi), in her statement (on September 23), yet again sought to divert attention from Pakistan’s role as the hub of global terrorism. She did so by callously holding up a picture of an injured girl. It was a photograph of Rawya abu Jom’a, a girl from Palestine…,” Ms Tripathi said. “In view of this cynical and misleading attempt by Pakistan, we are constrained to show this Assembly, a photograph that reflects the real picture of pain inflicted by the nefarious designs of Pakistan on India. This is a real and not a fake picture of Lt. Umar Faiyaz, a young officer from the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir. Umar Faiyaz was kidnapped at a wedding celebration. He was brutally tortured and killed by Pakistan supported terrorists in May 2017.”
Interestingly, early this week, the army announced that two militants who were part of the group that kidnapped and killed Umar Fayaz were killed in Dragad, near Sugan.
The Commander of Srinagar based 15 Corps; Lt Gen AK Bhatt said the death of Lt Umar Fayaz, who was brutally killed in Shopian in 2017, had been avenged. “Among the militants killed are Ishfaq Malik and Rayees Thokar. They were responsible for his death,” Bhatt said.
Three days later, Umar Fayaz was born again. Reincarnation?
(Kashmir life)
