Colonel Santosh Babu’s four-year-old son, wife at the heartbreaking last rite rituals (File)

Hyderabad:

The country should send a message to the security forces guarding the borders that it stood with them, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao said on Friday as he announced compensation for the families of 20 soldiers killed in the Indo-China faceoff in Ladakh.

The Telangana government will give Rs 5 crore to the family of 39-year old Colonel Bikkumalla Santosh Babu and Rs 10 lakh each to the families of the 19 other soldiers who were killed in the high altitude border clash with the Chinese troops in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley on Monday night, he said.

The centre and other state governments should also come forward to support the families of the soldiers, Mr Rao told Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the virtual all-party meet on the border face-off, an official release said.

The country should support the soldiers who are defending it at the borders. We should support the families of soldiers who were killed, thereby we should instill confidence in the (minds of) soldiers and their families. We should send a message to all Defence Forces that the country is with them, Mr Rao said.

Besides monetary compensation, the wife of the Colonel, who belonged to Telangana, will be given a Group-1 job in the government along with a house plot, the release quoted the Chief Minister as saying.

The Rs 10 lakh relief to the 19 families will be given through the Defence Minister, Mr Rao added.

Though there were financial constraints due to the coronavirus pandemic, all governments should minimise their other expenditures and extend support for the welfare of the brave soldiers.

Colonel Santosh Babu, the commanding officer of the 16 Bihar Regiment, had led the soldiers during the fierce clash with Chinese troops in the first such incident involving fatalities after a gap of 45 years, signalling a massive escalation in the five-week border stand-off in the sensitive region.