PM Narendra Modi inaugurates memorial for officers killed abroad

NEW DELHI: Government officials who lay down their lives overseas in the call of duty will now have a memorial. Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the remembrance plaque at the new Jawaharlal Nehru Bhawan on Saturday in the presence of India's ambassadors and high commissioners.

Official sources said the memorial sculpture is a set of six installations of a bird of paradise flower in bloom, made of sandstone stems and titanium petals. Titled 'Transformation', it is a creation of two artists from the National Institute of Design, Jatin Bhatt and Prakash Vani. The inscription on the plaque, from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, reads, " Mrityorma Amritam Gamaya" (from death to immortality).

The foreign service lost B Venkateswara Rao in the 2008 Taliban attack on the embassy in Kabul while Ravindra Mhatre was killed by JKLF terrorists in UK in 1984. Surprisingly , the foreign ministry doesn't plan to put up individual commemorative plaques.