She was packing her bags. Seven months after her wedding, the young wife of Major Jamal Baloch was preparing, at last, to join her husband in Peshawar, perhaps for the first time since their marriage. Folded clothes. Careful plans. The ordinary, happy anticipation of a new bride going to her husband’s home. She never made that journey.
On 17 July 2017, Major Jamal Baloch Shaheed embraced martyrdom in a suicide attack near Hayatabad, Peshawar. And in one shattering moment, her hopes turned to grief, the half-packed bags were set aside, and a young marriage that had barely begun was ended forever.
A Soldier of 5 Azad Kashmir Regiment
Major Jamal Baloch, of the 117 Long Course, ex 5 Azad Kashmir Regiment, was a brave officer of the Pakistan Army, and his courage was a matter of record: he had earned the Tamgha-e-Basalat for gallantry. The Azad Kashmir Regiment has a proud record of service on some of the country’s hardest postings, and Major Jamal wore its colours with honour.
Behind the uniform was a young man with plans. Newly married, building a life with his young wife, looking forward to the ordinary happiness of a soldier’s homecoming. A family that loved him. A future that stretched ahead. All of it ended near Hayatabad on a July day in 2017, in the blast of a suicide bomber.
Suicide attacks were the weapon of choice against the country’s defenders in those years, and officers posted to Peshawar knew the risks intimately. They served anyway. Major Jamal Baloch stood his post in a city that had seen too much blood, refusing to let fear dictate where duty called him. That refusal is what the nation honours every 17 July.
The Day of Shahadat
When the news reached his home, his father, Sheran Sanghoor, had to gently stop his daughter-in-law from finishing her packing. Picture that scene: a father who has just lost his son, finding the strength to comfort the young bride, to tell her to unpack, because the husband she was going to join would never come home. Her hopes turned into fears, while the fears of the nation were turning into hopes.
But Sheran Sanghoor’s grief was wrapped in extraordinary pride. He dressed in his finest clothes to receive his son’s coffin. Think about what that means: a father, shattered, choosing dignity over despair, honouring his son the way the son had honoured his country. When the coffin reached home, a sea of people gathered to pay homage to the son of the soil who had laid down his life for the nation he loved most.
Every year on 17 July, his shahadat anniversary is observed in his honour, now nine years on. The grief has not lessened. It has only been joined, year after year, by a pride that refuses to die.
A Father’s Dignity, A Nation’s Lesson
There are moments in a nation’s life that reveal its character, and the image of a father dressing in his best clothes to receive his martyred son’s coffin is one of them. Sheran Sanghoor showed Pakistan what dignity in grief looks like: sorrow carried upright, pride worn openly, and love for the country placed alongside love for the child.
Behind every uniform is a family that pays the price of the nation’s freedom. The young wife who unpacked her bags instead of joining her husband. The father who welcomed a coffin instead of a son. The sea of people who gathered at the door. These are the quiet, human dimensions of a sacrifice that statistics can never capture, and they are the reason the nation must never look away.
To the terrorist who struck that day, Major Jamal was a target. To Pakistan, he was a son, a husband, an officer, and a hero. The bomber took his life. He could not take what his life meant.
Never Forgotten
Major Jamal Baloch Shaheed’s sacrifice reminds us that freedom is never free, and that it is paid for in the currency of young lives and broken-hearted families. His father taught the country how to grieve with pride. His widow’s unfinished packing remains a silent testament to all that was lost.
Nine years on, the bags are still unpacked. The grief is still fresh. And Pakistan still remembers. It will never forget him.
