By IANS
Chandigarh : Former soldier Kashmir Singh, released earlier thjis week from a Pakistani jail, Friday got a bonanza when the Punjab government announced a monthly pension of Rs.10,000 to him and his wife and a senior government functionary donated a 500 square yard plot to him.
Singh, who called on Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal here Friday with his wife Paramjit Kaur, would be given a monthly pension of Rs.5,000 and his wife will get another Rs.5,000 as monthly pension separately.
Badal said this was being done for the extraordinary sacrifice made by Singh and his family made in the service of the nation. “He is a national hero,” said Badal.
The chief minister’s media adviser Harcharan Bains, who belongs to Mahilpur town near Singh’s village Nangal Choran, announced that he would donate to Kashmir Singh a one kanal (500 square yards) plot from his ancestral property in Mahilpur town in Hoshiarpur district, 130 km from here.
Badal said the government would bear the expenses for the construction of Kashmir Singh’s new house.
The plot was donated after Kashmir Singh sought help from the chief minister for accommodation, saying that his family house in the village was too small and dilapidated to stay for his entire family.
“This is the minimum that I could do in lieu of the sacrifice made by Kashmir Singh and his family for the country,” said media adviser Bains.
Singh was arrested by Pakistan’s security agencies in 1973 from Rawalpindi town on charges of spying. He was subsequently sentenced to death by an army court there but continued to languish in Pakistani jails for 35 years after his sentence was reduced to life imprisonment.
The chief minister said that the Punjab government would also provide a government job to the physically challenged son of Kashmir Singh in or around Mahilpur as a ‘one off’ case. The approval of the Punjab cabinet will be sought in this regard, he added.