NEW DELHI: Tributes were paid to the nine Siachen bravehearts, who were buried alive in an avalanche, at the Palam Airport here on Monday where their mortal remains have been kept for the people to pay their last respects.
Several senior army officers and defence personnel laid wreath to honour the supreme sacrifice of these men.
The mortal remains of martyrs, which was today brought from Leh, would be later carried by IAF aircrafts to Bangalore, Chennai, Trivandrum, Madurai, Pune and Hyderabad.
A Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) and nine other soldiers of the Madras Regiment were buried under the avalanche on February 3. While Lance Naik Hanamanthappa Koppad was miraculously dug out alive, the bodies of nine others were recovered on February 9.
The others killed in the avalanche were Havildar Elumalai M of Dukkam Parai village, Vellore district, Tamil Nadu, Lance Havildar S Kumar of Kumanan Thozhu village, Theni district, Tamil Nadu, Lance Naik Sudheesh of Monroethuruth village, Kollam district, Kerala and Sepoy Mahesha PN of HD Kote village, Mysore district, Karnataka.
Sepoy Ganesan of Chokkathevan Patti village, Madurai district, Tamil Nadu, Sepoy Rama Moorthy of Gudisatana Palli village, Krishnagiri District, Tamil Nadu, Sepoy Mustaq Ahmed of Parnapalle village, Kurnool district, Andhra Pradesh and Sepoy (Nursing Assistant) Suryawanshi S V of Maskarwadi village, Satara district, Maharashtra are the others.