As a part of the ongoing 15-days  celebratory campaign to commemorate the country's 70th anniversay of Independence Day, Lt Gen Nirbhay Sharma(Retd.), Governor of Mizoram, accompanied by his wife, Lady Governor Jyotsna Sharma paid visit to Pu Darthawma, former Azad Hind Fauj's  soldier and a Freedom Fighter at the latter's residence, Chanmari, Lunglei Town, Mizoram.The surviving Freedom Fighter, blessed with extremely good health has just celebrated his 96th birthday earlier this year on15th of May. 

Later on, during a formal felicitation programme for Freedom Fighter Shri Darthawma held at the Cultural Heritage Centre, Lunglei the Governor paid a rich tribute to the former by calling his services to the cause of freedom as truly patriotic and awe inspiring. Emphasizing the feats of Shri Darthawma as exemplary, the Governor also stress the needs to understand the Indian freedom struggles in the right perspectives and categorically classed all the people who are now within Sovereign Republic India and who had resisted the colonial British Rules as freedom fighters notwithstanding the differences in the means they might have used. Further, he made a strong appeal to the youth of today to draw inspirations from freedom fighter and a truly nationalist such as Shri Darthawma to makeIndiaeven stronger and more integrated. 

The life biography a nonagenarian freedom fighter was read out during the felicitation programme.  Pu Darthawma, born in 15th May, 1920 atPukpuiVillage, few miles fromLungleiTownin Southern part of Mizoram. During World War II he was enrolled in Indian Army Medical Corps as regiment No.43508 and then was sent toPenangIslandinMalaysiato fight the marauding  Japanese Army but unfortunately found himself on the losing side to be taken as Prisoners of War inSingaporeby the Japanese Army. Once Netaji visited their prison, he was among other soldiers to join Azad Hind Fauj(Indian National Army) to fight forIndia'sIndependence. He fought the British Army along with his comrades of INA and Japanese soldiers inBurma. But they ultimately surrendered to the British with the surrender of the Japanese Army due to bombing ofHiroshimaandNagasaki. He was trialed for sedition and convicted for "waging war against the British". After spending 2 monthsChittagong's jail, he spent 1 year in Lucknow Jail. He was released as his case, with intervention of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, was converted into a lesser degree of offence on 15th January 1945.