Punjabi WW1 soldier recognised

A Leicester man has described as 'amazing' how he received new information about his great-grandfather who fought in the First World War and never came back.

Sunney Palahey's great-grandfather Kesar Singh is one of thousands of soldiers from pre-partition India who fought and died in the war who are finally being officially recognised, after decades of being missing from the historical record.

Nearly 10,000 British Indian Army servicemen are being added to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database in the biggest update to its casualty records since the Second World War.

UK volunteers spent years looking for the names in unique registers compiled in the state of Punjab shortly after WW1. Work is now being done to trace British descendants of those whose sacrifice is now acknowledged.

Sunney Palahey told BBC Leicester's Rupal Rajani how he reacted when researchers contacted him to say his great-grandfather's name had been found.

Image: Sunney Palahey