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New Delhi: Congress leader and Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, has decided to adopt 22 children from the Poonch district in Jammu and Kashmir. Those children lost their parents or family breadwinners during Operation Sindoor when the Pakistani Army resorted to shelling the area, killing innocent people.
Rahul will fully fund the education of these children, many of them orphaned by the Pakistani shelling. He will continue to support them until their graduation is complete, according to a report by The Indian Express quoting Tariq Hamid Karra, the Jammu and Kashmir Congress chief.
He said the first aid instalment will be released this week so that students can go to school without interruption. In May, Rahul visited Poonch and asked local Congress leaders to make a list of children affected by Pakistani shelling. Government records were cross-checked to finalise the names of the children.
Rahul also visited the Christ Public School in May to meet Urba Fatima and Zain Ali's classmates. They were 12-year-old twins who were killed by the Pakistani shelling. Rahul said, "I feel very, very proud of you. You miss your little friends. I’m very sorry about that. Now, you feel a little bit of danger and a little frightened, but don’t worry; everything will go back to normal. Your way of responding to this should be to study hard, play hard and make a lot of friends in school."
Poonch was ravaged by Pakistani shelling, and it killed several civilians, including children. Among them was Vihaan Bhargav, a young boy whose life was cut short when a shrapnel hit him as his family tried to escape the violence.
After the Pahalgam attack, the Indian Armed Forces executed Operation Sindoor in which nine terror hubs were destroyed across Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir and over 100 terrorists were killed. After the May 7 operations, India and Pakistan agreed on a ceasefire on May 10.
