By IANS
Jammu : The family of Deputy Superintendent of Police Shailey Singh was looking forward to his wedding when separatist guerrillas gunned down the young and dare devil officer in Jammu and Kashmir.
Shailey Singh's house at the District Police Lines here was slowly getting decked up to enable the 30-year-old to finally take the marital plunge amid an event filled career.
Painters had been hired to give a makeover to the house.
That was when TV channels flashed Wednesday the news that gunmen had shot dead Shailey Singh in the small town of Bhaderwah in the mountainous district of Doda.
A house filled with joy until then was stunned. So were all the neighbours.
When senior police officials visited his residence, it was a cruel repeat of what had happened to the family in 1993.
Shailey Singh's father Uday Bir Singh, also a police officer, was killed at the hands of Punjab militants in Nanak Nagar area of Jammu city then.
It was after his father's death that Shailey Singh had joined the police – and soon proved himself an efficient officer. He had two elder brothers.
Sobbing family members said the dead officer's mother, Darshan Kaur, was in charge of the upcoming marriage and kept saying that she was eagerly waiting for the wedding day.
"But fate willed otherwise," said Kulwant Kaur, a relative.
Inspector General of Police S.P. Vaid recalled that Shailey Singh had called on him recently and invited him for the wedding functions.
"'Sir, you will have to attend all my wedding functions. The invitation cards would follow, but please keep June 27 and the following days free'," Vaid quoted the dead man as saying.
Vaid added: "I didn't know I will have to deliver the news of his death to his family."
Shailey Singh's killing was a double blow to the police because the killers managed to escape.
"There was a rear door through which the militants escaped. The darkness worked to their advantage," Vaid said. But the police have launched a massive search in the area.