Lance Naik Hanamanthappa Koppad's wife who is in New Delhi for the last three days, has just arrived at Army R&R Hospital where the body of her husband lies.

Mahadevi Koppad, daughter Nethra and Hanamanthappa's parents had been flown in to New Delhi from Dharwad in Karnataka after the Lance Naik had been flown in to Delhi from Siachen.

Hanamanthappa, 33, died today of multiple organ failure at the army hospital in Delhi. He survived six days under 25 feet of ice after a deadly avalanche on the Siachen Glacier, the world's highest battlefield. Nine of his colleagues were killed. A rescue team found him barely conscious with a faint pulse. Army officers said an "air pocket" may be the reason he was alive.


His wife Mahadevi had in an interview just after he was brought in alive to Delhi had said that the next time God wanted to take a life, it should be hers. "Let my husband live to protect the country, he should survive," she had said.


Mahadevi, a mother of an 18-month old Netra, had been in a state of shock since last Wednesday when her husband Lance Naik Hanumanthappa Ramappa Koppad got buried in the snow along with nine soldiers from the Madras Regiment.