For instance, the parents of Captain Anshuman Singh, who received the Kirti Chakra, India’s second-highest peacetime gallantry award, expressed discontent with the Indian Army’s Next of Kin (NOK) criteria for providing financial aid to martyrs’ families.
Captain Anshuman Singh lost his life while rescuing his other army colleagues who were trapped in a fire incident at Siachen in July preceding the calendar year. However, his parents, Ravi Pratap Singh, and Manju Singh, said that Smriti Singh, their daughter-in-law, does not live with them, and she is the only beneficiary who receives the entitlements after his son’s death.
In an interview on a news channel, Ravi Pratap Singh conveyed his displeasure with the new NOK rules by saying, “The criteria set for NOK is not right. I have even talked to Defense Minister Rajnath Singh about this. Tell them Anshuman’s wife does not live with us now. The marriage was only five months, and there was no child, so we only have a photo of our son hanging on the wall
The NOK rules should ideally be revised, and this is supported by statements of Manju Singh, whereby she was equally in agreement with her husband, citing the challenges that most parents undergo by the side of their deceased loved ones.
Traditional Army regulations indicate that the parent or guardian’s name is entered in the NOK column whenever an individual enlists to join the service. However, the parents’ names are replaced by the spouse’s as the next of kin, who has a right to the ex-gratia amount and other bounties.
The parents of Captain Anshuman Singh, the key actor in the case, have requested that these rules be reviewed so that other families of the SFF’s fallen heroes can avoid the challenges they faced.
