NEW DELHI: Gurmehar Kaur was barely two when her father, Captain Mandeep Singh, of the 4 Rashtriya Rifles was killed in Kashmir on the night of August 6, 1999.

Captain Singh, 30, of the 4 Rashtriya Rifles was commanding a unit that came under attack from a group of 40 militants, who tried to storm the camp at Chak Nutnusa village of Kupwara district.

"Captain Singh was commissioned in the 49 Army Air Defence Regiment in 1991 and was serving with the 4 Rashtriya Rifles battalion in 1999. He was the commander of the unit that came under attack around 1.15am. He died in a gunbattle with the militants," a source said.

Six other soldiers were also killed in the attack that came within a month of the end of the Kargil war.

"The situation was extremely tense. Most army personnel were deployed at Anantnag as part of the security cover for Amarnath Yatra. Even Kupwara town was left under the CRPF. The militants had chosen a soft target," said a retired colonel with 7 Rashtriya Rifles under which Captain Singh's battalion served. Kupwara falls along the LoC.

Gurmehar, a first-year student of Lady Shri Ram College, has been trolled and threatened with rape since she stood up to the RSS students' wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and condemned campus violence. Tweets she had posted last year holding up placards against war and for peace with Pakistan were dug out, with cricketer Virender Sehwag and wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt ridiculing one placard that said: "Pakistan did not kill my dad, war killed him".

The 20-year-old had responded yesterday: "Don't call me a martyr's daughter if that bothers you. I never claimed otherwise. You can call me Gurmehar."

Her grandfather Kanwaljeet Singh said today: " Mera beta dushmanon ko maarke shahid hua (My son was martyred after killing the enemy)."

He spoke up for his granddaughter. " Beti ne bayaan yahi diya ke campus mein ladaiyaan nahin honi chahiye. Usi ke upar kitne logon ne kya kya bol diya hai, sabhi ka naam to main nahin le sakunga. Lekin beti ne inke khilaaf koi baat ki hai to bataayein (She only said campuses should be free from violence. For that, so many people have said so much against her. I cannot take all their names. But tell me, has she said a word against these people)," he said, speaking from his home in Jalandhar.

"She is a young girl, lost her father in the war. Don't they see a daughter in her?" the grandfather asked.

Gurmehar's uncle Davinderdeep, who teaches in a college, said his brother who was a daredevil would have been proud of his daughter.

"He would have stood by her side at this hour. She has taken a stand and her father would have been proud of it. Not a word she has said can be called anti-national," Davinderdeep said.

-The Telegraph Calcutta