Delhi University student Gurmehar Kaur — with her four-minute silent video — has taken India by storm after the Ramjas College incident, and has been targeted for it in a number of ways, including being threatened with rape and being trolled by a former cricketer as well as an actor. However, she has also been hailed as the daughter of a Kargil War hero. Sadly, that last part is not true.
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What Gurmehar says in the video
One of the primary reasons Gurmehar and her video caught people's attention and went viral was that she said she was the daughter of a Kargil War hero. The entire video is devoid of any spoken word, as Gurmehar talks to the camera with 30 cards. "Hi. My name is Gurmehar Kaur. I am from Jalandhar, India," she says in the first three of them.
Gurmehar goes on to add in the fourth card: "This is my dad Capt Mandeep Singh." It also has a photo of the Indian Army officer. And then Gurmehar adds: "He was killed in the 1999 Kargil War." She then goes on to deliver other pieces of information and opinion, like how she tried to attack a woman in burqa, and how she now wants peace between India and Pakistan. She also says about the attack: "My mother held me back and made me understand that Pakistan did not kill my dad, war killed him."
Not a Kargil War hero's daughter
While the Indian Army does not provide details of the Kargil War because of its policy of secrecy on all of its operations after 1947, it is common knowledge that the conflict is believed to have begun in early May 1999, with shepherds spotting intruders from Pakistan high in the mountains of Pakistan. It ended on July 26, 1999, with the Indian Army having completed the expulsion of the infiltrators from its side in Jammu and Kashmir.
However, according to an Indian Express report, Captain Singh and six others died while trying to repulse an attack on a Rashtriya Rifles post in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district on August 6, 1999. The report quotes the Battle Casualty Report as saying: "Capt Mandeep Singh was commander of the company which came under anti-national elements' fire assault on the post. During encounter at approximately 1:15 am on August 6, 1999, he received splinter injury on left infraclavicular region and was declared dead on the spot."
So, Captain Mandeep Singh was martyred like a hero in the line of duty while trying to protect his country, but it was after the Kargil War. Thus, while Gurmehar is indeed the daughter of a hero who was killed in the line of duty, she is not the daughter of a Kargil War hero.
