Thaindian News

New Delhi, May 31 (IANS) Two teenaged girls orphaned during the devastating cloudburst and floods in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir last August have got a new lease of life with the army adopting them and providing them education at its school in Dagshai in Himachal Pradesh.

The sisters, 16-year-old Tsewang and 14-year-old Kunzang, are at present studying in class nine and class seven respectively, a senior officer in the army headquarters here said Tuesday.

The girls had lost their father, Sepoy Pasker Tander, a soldier with Ladakh Scouts regiment, in a road accident in 1999 when they were aged just four and two respectively.

Their mother, as per local tradition, later married her late husband’s younger brother. But fate was not kind and the two girls’ mother, stepfather and a younger stepbrother died in the nature’s fury during the cloudburst and unprecedented floods thereafter that hit Leh, the largest town in Ladakh region, on August 6, 2010.

In September that year, the two girls were taken under the army’s wings and the Ladakh Scouts unit that their father served was given charge of the teenagers’ wellbeing and education.

They joined the Army Public School in Dagshai in class eight and class six respectively and after working hard for about six months, passed their final exams and were promoted to the next class, the officer said.

Lieutenant General S.R. Ghosh, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Chandimandir-based Western Army Command, will Wednesday meet the two girls at Dagshai on the sidelines of the army school’s annual day celebrations and felicitate them, the officer said.

Over 190 people, including five foreign tourists, were killed and another 200 went missing in the flash floods in Leh after the cloudburst. In the devastation that the natural disaster left in the Ladakh region, several thousands lost their families and were rendered homeless.

The army was in the forefront of the immediate rescue and relief operations in the Ladakh region that went on for over a month.