JAMMU/NEW DELHI: With the country in a lockdown situation due to the coronavirus pandemic, 30-year-old Arif had only one way to meet his ailing father – cycle 2,100 km from Mumbai to Jammu’s Rajouri district, where the 60-year-old lives in a remote village along the Line of Control (LoC).
Arif, a watchman, set out on the daunting journey hoping some miracle would happen and he would be able to see his father, who had suffered a “massive stroke” and was in critical condition. And miracle did happen, when the CRPF came to his help. The paramilitary force gave him and his father ‘wings’, quite literally.
Arif’s father Wazir Hussain was on Sunday airlifted from the Panjgrain village on a special chopper after the CRPF’s Kashmir-based ‘madadgaar’ helpline came into action.
On April 1, a week after the 21-day lockdown began, Arif came to know that his father had suffered the “massive stroke”. The man, who is employed as a watchman in the financial capital of the country, found that there was no mode of transport that could take him to his village along the India-Pakistan LoC. The next day, he decided to cover the huge distance on his bicycle. (PTI)
