‘As Wife of Martyr Squadron Leader Samir Abrol, I Need Answers’

“How many fighters have to give up their lives for you to wake up?”

Garima Abrol, wife of Squadron Leader Samir Abrol, who was killed in a Mirage 2000 aircraft crash.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

“How many more of these pilots have to give up their life to shake you up and make you realise there is something really wrong in the system?” asks Garima Abrol, wife of Squadron Leader Samir Abrol, who was killed after a Mirage 2000 aircraft that he and Squadron Leader Siddharth Negi were test flying crashed at the HAL airport in Bengaluru on 1 February.

In a detailed Facebook post on Sunday, 10 February, Garima has vowed to fight against the fallacies in the system as soldiers continue to lose their lives in the country.

“I am Garima Abrol… I am the wife of Martyr Squadron Leader Samir Abrol… whose tears are still not dry… It still hasn’t sunk in that you are gone. No one has the answer to my questions. Why YOU?”

Garima Abrol wrote a Facebook post seeking answers to her husband’s death in a Mirage 2000 aircraft crash on 1 February. (Photo: Screengrab @ Facebook)

“Every soldier’s wife’s biggest fear in life is when her husband would be called to the front line and serve in an active war. I too had this fear,” Garima wrote in her Facebook post.

Garima also reminisced how her husband was a proud Indian and how she loved sending him off “to serve the nation with a morning cup of tea and a head held high”.

“Many a time, I woke up crying after having one such bad dream… But Samir would hold me, console me and tell me… that it is the ultimate purpose of his job… to be able to serve our nation when the call comes… He wanted me to be brave, as that’s what he was, a brave soldier, patriot to the core.”

“A pilot is not made in a day, it takes a decade of training for their souls to get molded for the job. How many fighters have to give up their life for you to wake up? I do not want any other sister of the Armed Force family to suffer the pain that I am going through,” she wrote in her Facebook post.

Recently, an Instagram post noted that both the squadron leaders were exceptionally trained pilots, who had ejected as they were trained to, “but things (went) beyond their control – like the parachute catching fire – and both came crashing down.” Garima Abrol had shared this user’s Instagram post on her own Facebook wall on 9 February.

Post shared by Garima Abrol on 9 February. (Photo: Screengrab @ Instagram)