‘Father took a bullet to save others’, says son of Delhi cashier shot during bank robbery

The family says that the soldier in Santosh Sharma, a cashier with the Corporation Bank in Chhawla, who retired as a junior warrant officer of the Indian Air Force, never gave up on any situation and it was this attitude that led to his death.

“He didn’t get an opportunity to face a bullet for his country while in service (air force) but he laid down his life at his workplace to save others.” This is how Santosh Sharma’s son Aryan chooses to remember his father.

Family Members of Bank cashier Santosh Sharma, at their residence after six armed robbers, with their faces masked, barged into the Corporation Bank in Delhi on Friday afternoon and killed the cashier at Chhawal in New Delhi on October 13, 2018. (Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO)

Forty-five-year-old Sharma, a cashier with the Corporation Bank in Chhawla, was shot dead during a dacoity at the bank on Friday.

The family says that the soldier in Sharma, who retired as a junior warrant officer of the Indian Air Force, never gave up on any situation and it was this attitude that led to his death.

Aryan (16) said his father was one of the “most disciplined and courageous men” he has ever come across. Aryan and his father had made plans for Saturday, the day this reporter spoke to him. They were to go shopping for a laptop — a birthday gift for the boy who would turn 17 on October 27. But all that changed on Friday, leaving Aryan trying hard to come to grips with his father’s death.

Aryan, who is in class 11, said, “He taught us to never bend. I am sure he would have fought the gunmen and that was why he alone was shot. If the dacoits had to kill, they would have killed others too and not just my father.”

On Friday morning, Sharma had dropped him to school before going to the bank. While returning from school around 4pm, Aryan saw his mother and sister rushing somewhere on the scooter. “I called out to them but they did not hear me. I had no clue. It was only later that I was told that my dad had been shot by robbers. When I went to the Rao Tula Ram hospital, I found out that he was already dead,” Aryan said. Sharma’s wife was not in a condition to talk.

Sharma is survived by his wife and two children – Aryan and his younger sister Aashi (12), a class 7 student.