New Delhi: The widow of an Indian peacekeeping officer, who was killed in a sniper attack in Kosovo on August 4 has blamed the Central government for not helping the bereaved family.

Gunman Satish Chandra Menon, 43, was killed in an ambush while patrolling in his UN car in Northern Kosovo. It was the first casualty reported by the four-year-old force.

"Nothing from the Indian government… not even a phone call or a visit. Even when we asked for the body to be sent to Kerala, as we belong to Kerala, they said that they will provide the ticket for one person," Menon's teary-eyed wife Leela said.

"I told them that I have two children and how can I leave them. But they said they will provide a ticket only for one person and the rest I will have to arrange," she added.

Leela said she was proud of her husband's sacrifice. "It is a very major loss… nothing in the world can compensate for it. But I am proud that he was a very brave soldier. All Indian soldiers are brave, the pride of the nation and the world," said Leela.

Menon is survived by two children, aged six and eight respectively. He belonged to the Border Security Force (BSF) and had served in Jammu and Kashmir for six years before being posted in Leposovic for a year.

Meanwhile, UN police in Kosovo have offered a 50,000 Euro reward to anyone revealing the whereabouts of Menon's killers. The UN, whose 4,450 officers come from about 50 countries, said a special team had been set up to investigate the incident.

Kosovo was placed under a UN-led administration in June 1999 after an 11-week Non Alignment Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombing campaign to halt Serbian repression of the province's majority Albanians when then President Slobodan Milosevic ruled Yugoslavia.

India has been sending its security forces to Kosovo since 1999. Most of them are drawn from federal and state police departments.

ANI