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Celina Jaitly remembers ‘final’ call with brother detained in UAE: ‘More pain than words’
Celina Jaitly's brother, Maj (Rtd) Vikrant Kumar Jaitly, has been detained in the United Arab Emirates since September last year.
Bollywood actor Celina Jaitly on Sunday shared a long post on social media, expressing her pain and demanding answers over the detainment of her brother, Maj (Rtd) Vikrant Kumar Jaitly, in the United Arab Emirates since September last year.
In her post, she wrote that it has been “1 year, 2 months, 17 days, 443 days in total, 10,632 hours, 637,920 minutes” since her brother was taken and her life has become “a countdown of fear, hope & unbearable silence”.
Her brother, an Indian Army official, has been reportedly detained in the UAE over national security concerns, as mentioned in an earlier HT report.
Celina Jaitly on ‘unspoken pain’ of her brother
In a long post on the social media platform X, the actor said, “Since Maj Vikrant was 1st abducted, held incommunicado for eight long months, then kept in detention somewhere in the Middle East, my life has been a countdown of fear, hope & unbearable silence.”
She said that she “dreaded” to know what “they have done to him” because of what her brother told her in their last “final” call. She described it as “a call carrying more pain than words. A call carrying more truth than the world is ready to face.”
She wrote that she had more questions than answers, adding that the matter was no longer just personal due to the “pattern of picking up our soldiers & veterans abroad”.
“We must ask this question. We must demand answers. We must not turn away,” she said.
She wrote that she has put her faith and hope in the Indian government to bring their soldier back safely. “Bring our soldier back. Do not let this momentum die. Do not let a man who gave everything to this nation be abandoned in silence,” she wrote.
Celina also quoted her late father, Col VK Jaitly (SM), as saying: “If you want to honour a soldier, be an Indian worth dying for.”
Concluding the post, she wrote, “BHAI I HAVE LOST EVERYTHING FINDING YOU. I will NOT stop, I will NOT give up till he is back to the soil of his Bharat, the country he gave up all for!!”
MEA on Celina’s brother’s detention
Celina had moved to the Delhi high court against Vikrant’s arrest in connection with “a case”, after which the court directed the external affairs ministry to provide legal assistance to the former army officer.
The external affairs ministry, earlier this month, said that the Indian authorities are providing all possible help to Celina’s brother. “Our embassy is seized of the matter. We have been making consular visits to him, and we have done so on four occasions,” external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said while responding to a question on the issue.
