A Facebook post has gone viral with the claim that the Union government has denied “martyr” status to CoBRA jawans who laid their lives fighting the Maoists in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur recently.
Several Facebook users have shared the screenshot of an “Aaj Tak” article with a headline in Hindi which translates to, “Centre tells high court, paramilitary forces cannot be given martyr status”.
Netizens have shared the image with a caption in Hindi which says, “Can’t the government of this country provide martyr status to CoBRA commandos of CRPF who were martyred in Bijapur? This government cannot insult the martyrs and soldiers of our country like this”
Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that there is no official nomenclature as “martyr” in the defence and paramilitary services. However, the family or next of kin of jawans killed in action are given pension, compensation and other additional benefits. The viral post has a screen shot of an “Aaj Tak” news article which was published in 2015. As per this article, in response to a PIL, the Centre had informed the Delhi high court through an affidavit that the term “martyr” is not used in the defence services for any force.
In 2018, as per an article by “The Economic Times” the Union government in an affidavit told the Delhi high court, “The prayer… to grant ‘martyr’ or ‘shaheed’ to Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) at par with Army, Navy and Air Force is misconceived as the very same status is not actually being granted to the personnel of Army, Navy and Air Force.”
In an affidavit, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and other ministries said the word ‘martyr’ was not used in the three services and “no such order/notification has been issued by the MoD to call martyr, (those) who are killed during duty. Similarly, no such notification has been issued by Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for the CAPF and Assam Rifle (AR) personnel.”
The government’s response came on a PIL by advocates Abhishek Choudhary and Harsh Ahuja to grant equal status to paramilitary and police forces like the armed forces in granting ‘martyr’ status to the deceased personnel.
Therefore, it is confirmed that the Facebook post claiming the Centre is insulting deceased CRPF jawans in Bijapur by denying them martyr status is misleading.
