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Watch | CRPF personnel greeted with a round of applause at Jammu airport
The crowd waiting at the airport’s terminal building broke into spontaneous applause for the CRPF jawans.
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Security forces have been booed, jeered and even manhandled in Kashmir, but on Sunday, a group of CRPF personnel on way to Srinagar were given a thunderous applause by the people at Jammu airport.
“On Sunday, CRPF personnel entered the terminal building of Jammu airport to board a Srinagar bound chartered aircraft bound. The moment they entered the building, the public present there gave them thunderous applause and the building resonated with the sound of claps,” said CRPF spokesman Ashish Kumar Jha.
The felicitation continued till the last man left the terminal building for the aircraft, he said and added that it was a very warm gesture by the people towards the uniform, which encourages the force (CRPF) personnel to serve the motherland with utmost zeal and devotion.
The video clips, apparently shot by some CRPF men on their mobile phones among the group, have gone viral on social sites.
“The entire force is overwhelmed with the gesture shown by the passengers at the Jammu Airport. It motivates the force, which is committed to the service of the nation,” DG CRPF Rajeev Rai Bhatnagar told ANI.
He added, “This is all because of the way our force has been doing its service and also the sacrifices we have made.”
In May this year, Army Chief General Bipin Rawat had honoured major Leetul Nitin Gogoi, who had allegedly tied a Kashmiri man (army claimed him to be a stone-pelter, who provoked others at a polling station to lynch the staff) on the bonnet of an army vehicle for safe passage to polling staff and CRPF personnel.
That video had also gone viral on the net and there was an outcry across Kashmir over alleged human rights violations of the man identified as Farooq Ahmed Dar.
While, Army Chief honoured major Gogoi, the J&K state human rights commission in Kashmir in July this year had directed the government to pay ₹10 lakh as compensation to Farooq Ahmad Dar.
In April this year, during the Lok Sabha elections, videos of CRPF men being slapped and kicked by miscreants in Budgam, where they were posted for poll duties, had also gone viral and had invited outrage across the country.
The men in uniform and in combat fatigues with weapons had exercised maximum restraint and had kept calm despite severe provocations.
