India’s Most Fearless: True Stories of Modern Military Heroes

by Shiv Aroor

  ‘We killed 8 of the 11 guys who laid the ambush. We got them the same day. Their joy was short-lived. We were faster than them.’ Lt. Col. Delta remembers the psychological significance of that swift retribution. It was a lesson that stayed with the insurgents for years.

  Now, a decade later in 2015, Lt. Col. Delta was quick to grasp that the Manipur ambush would be a turning point in the conflict spread across the North-east. He also knew that his unit, specializing in jungle warfare, would be enlisted to deliver whatever retribution was deemed necessary. Over the next 36 hours, Lt. Col. Delta’s squad, with the guidance and blessings of a grimly determined Army and government leadership, would chart out a spectacular mission of revenge.

  Few know the North-east better than the men of this particular Para-SF unit. And nobody fights the way they do. The North-east has been a hunting ground for the unit for nearly 2 decades. From its Assam headquarters, commando squads are scattered across the region, primed and ready to jump straight into action anywhere they’re ordered to.

  Lt. Col. Delta knew he was a marked man. A well-built warrior standing 5 feet 10 inches tall, his reputation had already spread wide. For insurgents, he was the man to take down. Since 2006, the officer had been (and remains) on most-wanted lists of the Manipur-based People’s Liberation Army and United National Liberation Front. The fact affects neither his peace of mind nor his work.

  ‘Militancy is all about fear. They have been seeing me for over 10 years. I think they should be afraid of me. I am the one authorized to carry an automatic weapon and walk freely on the streets in the area, not they,’ he says.

  But the paratrooper does not keep his family with him. For their own safety, they continue to live at an undisclosed Army base where they have been for several years. Their ancestral home in the North-east remains locked even today.

  When Lt. Col. Delta got his battle orders, he didn’t need to prepare his men. Even before the Manipur ambush, Lt. Col. Delta’s unit had been preparing to strike NSCN-K camps across the border in Myanmar after suspected Naga rebels ambushed and killed 8 soldiers in the state’s Mon district on 4 May 2015, exactly a month before the Manipur attack.

  Had the 5 June ambush not happened, the Army would have gone ahead with the original plan. A team of Para-SF commandos would have infiltrated Myanmar on the night of 5 June and wiped out an NSCN-K camp that had been on their radar for a while.

  Headed by Myanmar-based insurgent leader S.S. Khaplang, the notorious outfit fighting for the creation of Greater Nagaland ended a 14-year-long ceasefire with the Indian government on 27 March that year. It was clear that Khaplang did not want peace. After the abrogation of the ceasefire, the insurgent outfit launched a series of attacks against security forces. Retribution was already thick in the air. The punitive strike had been planned at the local level, but the central government wouldn’t take ownership. It would have been executed swiftly and quietly, as such strikes mostly are.

  But these sensitivities, along with the planned punitive strike from Nagaland, went straight out of the window when the Manipur massacre happened on 5 June 2015.

  ‘We were told that the Army Chief was flying to Imphal on 5 June. Something bigger was unfolding,’ Lt. Col. Delta recalls.

  Something bigger and deeply more audacious was indeed being planned. The government at the Centre was absolutely certain that the Manipur massacre deserved immediate punitive action. But what precisely that action would be was yet to be determined.

  There were already early signs that retaliation was being planned and it would be severe. Hectic developments followed. In Delhi, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval dropped out of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tour of Bangladesh. Gen. Dalbir Singh, then Army Chief, postponed a visit to the UK. None of this was normal.

  A day after the ambush, Gen. Dalbir Singh flew to Imphal where he was briefed on the developments by Lt. Gen. Bipin Rawat (who became Army Chief the following year), then commanding the Army’s Nagaland-headquartered 3 Corps. Lt. Col. Delta and the involved Para-SF unit’s CO were among the select group of men present at the briefing, where Lt. Gen. Rawat made it clear that the Manipur attackers were not beyond the Army’s reach. Every man in that room knew that the attackers were now on foreign soil. The message couldn’t have been clearer.

  In the warm yellow glow of halogen lamps, the locations of insurgent camps were red-pinned on the maps showing the border areas spanning Manipur, Nagaland and Myanmar.

  ‘We were told by Gen. Dalbir Singh that the operation had been approved at the highest levels of the government, and the defence minister would be controlling it. Full support. Full backing. This was the moment we had been waiting for,’ Lt. Col. Delta says.

  While most aspects of the plan remained fluid, one thing was clear by the end of that top-secret briefing: the Army would have its revenge within 72 hours. The decks had been cleared for a daring cross-border raid into Myanmar—surgical strikes that the government in Delhi would not deny.

  7 June would be D-Day.

  The senior Generals asked Lt. Col. Delta to stay back in the briefing room. The broad contours of the surgical strikes on insurgent camps emerged for the first time. The commandos from the lethal Para-SF unit would mount a 2-pronged attack. From Manipur and Nagaland, 2 teams would simultaneously infiltrate and destroy the jungle sanctuaries that were known to harbour and train insurgents.

  The orders were grim but clear. Lt. Col. Delta and his squads were to hit camps with the largest numbers of insurgents, so the commandos could inflict maximum damage. The targets had to be chosen carefully before launching the mission. It would have served no purpose if the men found themselves at the doorstep of a thinly held camp. The stakes were enormously high and it wasn’t just the government expecting results. A grieving, but steadfast Army was, too.

  ‘We spent our first few hours selecting camps which the insurgents would have thought were beyond our reach—where they felt secure. It was not to be a token assault,’ Lt. Col. Delta recalls.

  Conventional military manoeuvres require a great deal of intricate planning. Special operations on foreign soil are something else entirely. They require a degree of preparation and detail that would make regular drills seem like child’s play. Success of special missions depends on a range of factors, chiefly sound strategizing, accurate intelligence and scrupulous planning that takes every eventuality into account.

  There was no shortage of targets to choose from across the border in Myanmar. Insurgents had found security in the border jungles. Hours after the Manipur attack, the Army had zeroed in on the targets that its highly skilled commandos would attack in Myanmar: 3 insurgent camps, which Lt. Col. Delta and his men would target. A similar squad would mount an assault from Nagaland.

  But there was a problem. And it wasn’t a minor one.

  Distance.

  The camps across the Manipur border were located deep inside, and striking them on 7 June, just 2 days later, was a daunting prospect. D-Day would have to be rescheduled. And that, Lt. Col. Delta knew, was the only way to increase the chances of a successful strike. He spoke his mind to the Generals that evening. There was still much work to be done.

  ‘The distance was too much. We needed more time. The attack could have been launched on 7 June from Nagaland as everything was in place, but the idea was to launch the teams simultaneously. And we couldn’t have done it from Manipur in that time frame,’ Lt. Col. Delta remembers. His assessment was as clinical as it could have been.

  Distance wasn’t the only hurdle. The Para-SF’s strength in Manipur wasn’t enough to mount the operation. Lt. Col. Delta had just 40 men on 5 June. And that was why the detachment of 100 Para-SF men on their way to the Democratic Republic of the Congo was stopped and diverted to their neck of the woods. They were in Imphal by dinner time.

  Corps Commander Lt. Gen. Rawat had shifted base from his headquarters in Nagaland’s Dimapur to Imphal to manage the new mission.

  As a Brigadier, Lt. Gen. Rawat had helme
d the Indian brigade in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2008–09 and the UN had credited him with defending a key Congolese province that could have been overrun by rebels. Lt. Gen. Babacar Gaye, then the Force Commander of the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, wrote in a commendation later awarded to then Brig. (now Gen.) Rawat that it was due to his ‘leadership, courage and experience’ that North Kivu’s capital Goma never fell, stability returned to the country’s eastern region and the main rebel group was forced to come to the negotiating table.

  The presence of a hands-on commander, known for his military acumen, helped the commandos prepare literally to defy death on the mission into Myanmar. They knew they were in able hands.

  ‘The top bosses were in the loop, and arranging a special aircraft to fly the Congo-bound men to Imphal happened without a hitch. Lt. Gen. Rawat made sure all logistics were taken care of so that we commandos could focus solely on the mission,’ Lt. Col. Delta recalls.

  The timely arrival of the commandos was critical for the mission. The 3 insurgent camps were built next to each other. Intelligence inputs pegged the number of insurgents present at these camps at more than 120. Planning the mission with 40 commandos would have been possible, but a grave risk. It would have also limited Lt. Col. Delta’s options to choose the best men for the mission.

  For this mission demanded the best—of the best.

  By midnight on 5 June, the raid schedule had been reworked and defined. Striking the targets on 7 June was officially ruled out. D-Day was now pushed 2 days further to 9 June, giving the commandos sufficient time to physically reach their targets. Lt. Col. Delta relaxed for the first time that day, exhaling as the men returned to their barracks for a few hours of sleep.

  The plan had been discussed in as much detail as possible. Lt. Col. Delta had told his men that their objective would be to reach a wooded hilltop overlooking the targets by midnight on 8 June. The plan was to mount the final assault at the crack of dawn on 9 June. It sounded simple enough in theory, but no man listening to Lt. Col. Delta breathed any easier. They were looking forward to a tough new assignment on foreign soil. They had spent years training hard in the jungles of Mizoram and elsewhere for precisely this kind of mission. Lt. Col. Delta watched them as they retreated to rest. They were ready to prove to the country what India’s Special Forces were capable of.

  Alone in the briefing room now, Lt. Col. Delta stared hard at the map. A passion nurtured over the years, the officer adored maps of every kind, displaying an incredible ability to memorize locations and compute distances at terrific speed. His knack for understanding geography from a piece of paper had always been incredibly valuable to his squad. He switched off the light and walked back to his quarters, aware that this was possibly his final full night of sleep before they set off to exact revenge.

  The Para-SF warriors were to reach a predetermined staging area on the border from where they would move into Myanmar. The movement of the commando team had to be kept as discreet as possible. There was no scope for the insurgents to get the slightest whiff that something was afoot. It would spell the mission’s doom. Not only would revenge remain elusive, but more Army lives could be lost.

  ‘We put our heads together and worked out a deception plan,’ Lt. Col. Delta recalls. The commandos would be transported in Army trucks to make it look like regular infantry troops being moved, a routine affair in the North-east. Helicopters were out of the question—they would draw attention. Airlifting the commandos was therefore ruled out. Every detail was a closely guarded secret. Other than the commanders involved in the planning, not a soul knew about D-Day, the mode of transport or the composition of the 2 teams in Manipur and Nagaland. After a series of early morning briefings and presentations on 6 June, the commandos set out.

  The men were very heavily armed. They were taking no chances. Sixty-four of them hand-picked for the job were carrying Carl Gustav 84-mm rocket launchers, Pulemyot Kalashnikov general-purpose machine guns, Israeli-built Tavor TAR-21 assault rifles, Colt M4 carbines, AK-47s and under-barrel grenade launchers.

  Lt. Col. Delta was carrying his M4A1, the assault firearm he preferred. A smaller, fully automatic version of the venerable M16 assault rifle, the M4A1 carbine is finely tuned for use in special operations. Light and packing lethal power at both close and medium ranges, it remains the weapon of choice in elite squads around the world. Used across the US military as a primary infantry weapon, Lt. Col. Delta finds it perfect for quick reaction assault missions. The assault team’s arsenal also included Israeli Uzi silenced submachine guns to take down sentries at the camp, and Galil 7.62-mm sniper rifles. SF battalions are usually the best-equipped units of the Army. And it showed that day. They were carrying enough weapons and ammunition to cause a great deal of damage. The rifles weren’t slung across their shoulders. Commandos try not to use slings. A weapon sitting in your hands reduces reaction time. In a firefight, that could be everything.

  Apart from the weapons, the men were carrying backpacks stuffed with extra ammunition, combat rations, medical kits and water. The soldiers were not travelling light. Each of them was carrying a personal load of 40 kg, excluding the weight of weapons. Carrying their heavy loads, the men strode towards the Army trucks that were waiting with their engines on to transport them closer to the Myanmar border.

  Just as they were about to clamber into the vehicles, Lt. Col. Delta handed over his M4 to one of the men, who immediately realized what Lt. Col. Delta was about to do. The officer knelt down and kissed the earth, a ritual he followed before every mission: an invocation to the soil as a friend and guide.

  The Army trucks dropped off the battle-ready team at the staging area at around 0300 hours on 7 June. The targets were across the border and still very far away. The men would have to cover a distance of more than 40 km on foot to reach a designated hilltop, from where they could scan the camps before beginning the actual attack.

  Lt. Col. Delta had more than proven his worth as a soldier, but the next 48 hours would test his skills and leadership as a commander. On his shoulders rested the fate of the mission, the lives of the young men under his command and, above all, that intangible element that colours everything that soldiers account for in their line of work—national prestige.

  At daybreak on 7 June, the commandos began their trek through hilly terrain towards the border, with Lt. Col. Delta setting the pace and ensuring there was no slow-down. He remembers thinking of nothing else.

  Only very occasionally would he allow his mind to go to his mother who had been battling cervical cancer and was to undergo surgery 2 days later at a hospital near his hometown. Nobody in Lt. Col. Delta’s chain of command knew this. It had not even crossed his mind to ask for leave to be with his family. The mission was literally the only thing that occupied his thoughts.

  It was nearly dark when the Para-SF team reached the border. The temperature had dropped to about 25 °C and the men were greeted by a refreshing breeze coming from Myanmar. In 36 hours, this mission would be over. Everything was on schedule. After spending the night on the Indian side of the border, the men crossed into Myanmar at first light on 8 June.

  There was no turning back now.

  On foreign soil, Lt. Col. Delta and his men trekked through 6 km of hill and jungle. The men had done their homework. As part of the detailed planning that went into the operation, the team had hired 2 guides from an Indian border village in Manipur. The guides spoke Burmese fluently and knew their way through every bend in the thick woods that greeted the commandos. The guides’ knowledge of the land, coupled with Lt. Col. Delta’s photographic map-like memory, kept the squad precisely on course.

  Prepared for anything, the commandos had not encountered a hurdle so far. But they soon would. Not long after the men had crossed a rivulet that demarcates the border between India and Myanmar, they stopped in their tracks. The route they were taking through the wilderness was supposed to be isolated, bereft of human settlements. Apparently not.r />
  A group of men walked right into the squad, hauling a bounty of monitor lizards from among the 5 species found in the area. At being questioned by the guides, it turned out that the men were Burmese hunters who had killed the large lizards, considered a delicacy and aphrodisiac in some parts of the world. ‘There were 5 of them. We weren’t expecting them. But there they were, and something had to be done,’ Lt. Col. Delta remembers.

  The easiest option was to leave them alone and move on. But Lt. Col. Delta didn’t want to leave anything to chance. Loose ends are frequently what cause the demise of precisely planned operations. There was always the possibility that the men were informants sent by the insurgents as eyes and ears. It would take one word of warning from them to destroy the entire mission.

  The other option was to kill them. But Lt. Col. Delta knew he and his men couldn’t ever bring themselves to do that—not without proof that they were helping insurgents. They could well have been hunters who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  ‘Or maybe it was us. We were on their turf,’ Lt. Col. Delta smiles.

  Lt. Col. Delta made his decision. He ordered his men to secure the hunters with the ropes they were carrying, and decided to take them along as captives right up to the point from where reconnaissance teams could survey the camps. They simply could not risk the mission.

  Lt. Col. Delta glanced at his Mountain Hardwear watch, which had replaced his Fitbit activity tracker band that was his usual wristwear when not on duty. The men hadn’t lost time. He told them they would make a brief halt soon for a quick meal. The team hadn’t slowed down for a moment, moving briskly as they neared their targets. The tune playing in their heads could well have been a memorable military song from the film Lakshya. Lt. Col. Delta had played it on the sound system in their barracks the night before they left Imphal.