Lt. Nikita Kaul, wife of officer killed in Pulwama, joins Army

Northern Command chief puts stars on her shoulders

Twenty-seven months after she lost her husband in an anti-insurgency operation in south Kashmir’s Pulwama, 29-year-old Nitika Kaul on Saturday donned the Army uniform after completing one-year rigorous training in Tamil Nadu. Army’s Northern Commander Lt. Gen. Y.K. Joshi pipped the stars on her shoulders at a simple ceremony held at the Officers Training Academy, Chennai, and wished her best of luck for future endeavours. Lieutenant Kaul, originally a resident of Kashmir, was married to Major Vibhuti Shankar Dhoundiyal for just nine months when the news of him making the supreme sacrifice for the nation during a gunfight with Jaish-e-Mohammad militants turned her world upside down. The Major was among five security forces personnel killed in the February 18, 2019, encounter in which three JeM terrorists, including two top commanders believed to be behind the deadly Pulwama suicide attack on a CRPF convoy, were gunned down.