427th truck of Relief Material Distributed in Border Region of Punjab
Abhishek Arora
Distributed a truck load of relief material to the Terrorism Victims in village Bariyal situated across RAVI River in Border region of DinaNagar, Gurdaspur District. This truck was the 527th in the series spearheaded by Sh Vijay Chopra ji, Chief Editor Punjab Kesari Group of Newspapers. It was a memorable and heart rending experience to see the tough life of around 200 inhabitants of the village who are almost cut off from their motherland. These six villages are connected to India only through a temporary water way which they cross with the help of a "BERA", a crude boat which is operated only in fair weather when water levels are under control and is available for a few hours a day. As soon as the sun sets, they are land locked and confined in their remote village having no access to any medical or emergency facility during the night. To reach these villages, we had to cross the RAVI River through a BERA and were received by the officials of BSF who took us to the ZERO line, the border of INDIA and PAK near Gurdaspur and then to the village Bariyal where inhabitants had gathered in the Temple to receive the Relief Material.
The company of Sh Virender Sharma Yogi, Indutrilaist Rajiv Jain from Ludhiana, noted columnist S Joginder Sandhu, and my historian friend Prof. Lakshminder Bhoriwal made it a memorable experience.