At 6:45 am martyred Colonel Manpreet Singh spoke to his brother-in-law Virender Gill. There was nothing unusual in the way he spoke except he was too busy. Col Manpreet told his brother-in-law, that he would call later. Gill didn’t realise that this would be the last he would get to speak to his brave brother-in-law.

This decorated officer was the commanding officer (CO) of 19 Rashtriya Rifles battalion and led the joint operation of the Indian Army and Jammu and Kashmir police against the Pakistani terrorists hiding in dense Kokernag forests.

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His mother Manjit Kaur says, Col Manpreet was in love with the army uniform. This third-generation army officer – the seventh in his family — joined the military against the wishes of his father and gave up what would have been a lucrative career as a Chartered Accountant (CA) for olive green. Manjit Kaur says, “He used to get hold of his father’s army shirts, find buttons, and get them altered so that he could wear them.”

Manjit remembers, “Colonel Manpreet Singh’s father used to tell him not to join the army but he was adamant. So I told his father to let him serve the nation.”

A sincere and studious student during school and college days, Colonel Manpreet Singh, whose tenure was about to end in four months, was a topper from the beginning and loved books. The army officer’s younger brother Sandeep Singh said that the last conversation the two of them had about six days back, Col Manpreet had asked Sandeep to find a shop for binding old books so that they could be preserved for a long time.

His grittiness can be gauged from the fact that as a college student, he used to cycle from his village Bharonjian near Mullanpur in the Mohali (adjoining Chandigarh) to his college in Sector 32 in Chandigarh (about 32 kilometres to and fro).

Colonel Manpreet Singh was supposed to come on leave next month to attend his son’s birthday. He is survived by his mother, wife Jagmeet Grewal, and two children – a six-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter. His wife, Jagmeet Grewal, works as a lecturer in the Haryana education department.