Manoj Kumar Pandey

This revision is from 2023/02/03 13:18. You can Restore it.

From ( my friend ) sudhakar on whatsapp

• What a gesture....*

This is an anecdote involving an ex Army officer, who after retirement, was working with the Syndicate bank. There are not many people like this soldier. He is Col AK Jayachandran of 12 ASSAM.

Read on.....this is his account....

"In life there are some days when one feels terrible & some days, when one feels really good from within. One such happened on a Friday evening at around 7 pm last year in Sep. I was set to go home from the Bank. One clerk & an officer were all who remained in CPPC.

The phone rang. I hesitated for a minute & then picked it up. It was a Veteran Honorary Captain. He was irate & sounded quite fed up. To cut a long story short, he'd approached his bank's branch to settle his dues from his son's pension, which had not been correctly calculated. They'd kept fobbing him off - talk to CPPC. He could rarely get through & couldn't explain his problem properly either.

Finally he got my number from someone & called. I took his details - told my guys to take a look at it & tell me if he was really due. They did that & yes....there were arrears due to him. I called the Veteran to tell him that we would do it on Monday & credit it on Tuesday latest. Looking at the printout, I saw the name, Capt Manoj Pande ...no wife ...pension to parents ...date of death ...Kargil war days .

Speaking to the old man at 7:30 pm, I asked him if he was the father of Param Vir Chakra (PVC), late Capt Manoj Pande. He confirmed. I said I would call again.

Meanwhile, my staff had closed ther systems.... both youngsters....ready for a weekend. I sat them down & told them that we had a "PVC", who hadn't been paid his dues by the bank.

I gave them a short brief on what Kargil was all about. Told them that we had to credit the dues tonight. They quietly went to their table & switched on their system. In the next one hour, they worked out his dues & arrears, which was around 8 Lakhs. This amount was credited into his fathers account at about 9 pm.

I called up the father & told him that his account had been credited...he was very surprised...said it could've waited till Monday. I apologised for the banks delay & told him that having come to know, waiting till Monday would have been the biggest disrespect/dishonour to the PVC, so we had to do it tonight.

I then asked the father to speak to both my boys ...they paid their respects to him.

The old man thanked us & broke down ...he said that this one act had accorded more respect to the memory of his son, than any other civilian award.

It was an emotional moment.