India's Most Fearless 2

by Shiv Aroor

  ‘Sir, what is the point of going on ambushes every day when we are unable to make contact?’ Lt Navdeep asked gloomily, spooning the mess staple of chicken curry and rice into his mouth. ‘I’ll tell you frankly, Sir, I can’t wait for some big group of infiltrators to show up.’

  Col. Girish had chosen to keep Lt Navdeep with him at the tactical headquarters, keen that the ‘baby’ learn the ropes while also learning how to keep his emotions in check. That March, Lt Navdeep had graduated from the Officers Training Academy in Chennai and been commissioned into the Army Ordnance Corps, a combat logistics arm that supplies the Army with weapons, ammunition and clothes. He had been posted with the 15 Maratha Light Infantry for his mandatory three-year tenure with an infantry fighting unit, a regimen that gives officers of every arm an initial burst of ground experience that stays with them, no matter where they go. Deploying an officer fresh out of the academy in the Gurez sector along the LoC, an infiltration hotspot, was the very definition of dropping a man in the deep end.

  Col. Girish knew he needed to employ a careful mix of indulgence and firmness to handle the young officer who was hunched over his food.

  ‘Navdeep, wait, relax,’ said the CO. ‘Don’t worry. You will get your chance. Yeh Gurez sector hai (This is the Gurez sector). It’s only a matter of time.’

  Returning to his barracks at 11.15 p.m., Lt Navdeep dialled his girlfriend back home in Gurdaspur, Punjab, a town just 10 km from the international border with Pakistan. He was on the phone for only a few minutes when the first call from the surveillance team came in.

  The 11.45 p.m. call from the surveillance unit was actually the second call that night. It had first raised the alarm 15 minutes before, at 11.30 p.m. Lt Navdeep quickly ended the call with his girlfriend and ran out of his barracks, back to the operations room.

  In Gurdaspur, Lt Navdeep’s girlfriend sighed and put her phone away. She couldn’t really complain—he had told her that if he ever disconnected abruptly, it meant that the boss was calling him. Lt Navdeep had gone a step further with his mother, telling her that if he was unreachable for four or five days or more, she needn’t worry, since his missions normally lasted that long. Her husband a thirty-year Army veteran, Jagtinder Kaur would wonder when the endless anxiety would finally end. Lt Navdeep’s father, Subedar Joginder Singh, would calm her by gently admonishing her, telling her that the worry in her voice shouldn’t distract their son from his work.

  In the operations room, the CO was waiting for Lt Navdeep.

  ‘In that first call, the surveillance boys had reported some suspicious movement near the Kishenganga River,’ says Col. Girish. ‘The team reported seeing three or four infiltrators. This was not uncommon, since we had already anticipated the route any Pakistani infiltrators were likely to take. But crossing the river is not easy. It has a very fast current.’

  Only the previous day, a team from Rana had tried to cross the river using ropes, but had to give up halfway and return because of how cold the water was and how aggressive the current. So when the second call from the surveillance unit came in, informing Rana about the inflatable boat launched into the water, there was disbelief.

  Lt Navdeep wasted no time, asking to be sent out immediately to lead an ambush team.

  ‘At 11.30 p.m., our guy confirmed movement,’ says Col. Girish. ‘I immediately told him to keep the infiltrators in his sights using night-vision and his hand-held thermal imager (HHTI). We already had a few ambush parties, with eight men each, scattered in that area as part of our regular anti-infiltration deployment. And within minutes of receiving the input, we sent out more ambush parties to cover the likely infiltration routes. I asked Navdeep to lead one of these ambush teams.’

  The gloom dissipated in seconds. Lt Navdeep quickly gathered his team of seven soldiers, picked up his AK-47 assault rifle and departed from the Rana headquarters.

  ‘Navdeep had sensed that this was his operation,’ says Col. Girish. ‘All that sulking about having to wait endlessly for an encounter was washed away in seconds. I had never seen him so electrified as he left the base with his team.’

  Lt Navdeep’s ambush team positioned itself near a bend in the river, about 500 m upstream from the surveillance unit that had detected the infiltrators. There were three more ambush parties along that section of the river, scattered between Lt Navdeep and the surveillance unit. The ambush party next to Lt Navdeep’s was led by Naib Subedar Mengare Shankar Ganpati, and sat across a small nallah that branched off from the Kishenganga River to run through Kanzalwan town. Two other ambush parties closed in to cover every patch of vulnerable ground between Lt Navdeep’s position and the surveillance team downstream.

  Once they were deployed and ready, the radios of the ambush teams crackled, delivering another message from the surveillance team.

  ‘Counting fourteen or fifteen men with weapons and backpacks,’ came the alert.

  ‘I received the message in the Rana operations room too, as I was monitoring every move,’ says Col. Girish. ‘This was a big number being reported. The surveillance unit requested permission to fire at the infiltrators using their LMG. Their targets were across the river diagonally, and about 700 m distant.’

  The team was denied permission to use the LMG.

  ‘Aur paas aane do unko. Jitna paas aa sakte hain utna aane do. Jab unki aankhon mein dekh sakte ho, tab hi engage karna (Let them come closer. As close as they possibly can. When you can look in their eyes, then you open fire),’ Col. Girish said over the radio to the surveillance team.

  He had asked the team not to use the LMG because he knew that the chances of hitting the infiltrators at that distance in the dark were low.

  ‘At best, the team would have managed to bring down only one or two guys, and the rest might have escaped and gone back. Even if you engage at 100 m at night, it is very difficult to get kills,’ he says.

  The call that came at 11.45 p.m. about the boats suddenly changed everything. Never before had infiltrators tried to cross the river in a boat. There was a bridge less than 100 m upstream, which was used by locals to cross the river to cut wood or graze their animals. But the bridge was manned by Army soldiers. So it was impossible for infiltrators to use it without a fierce firefight first.

  Around midnight, the infiltrators had begun crossing the Kishenganga in their dinghy. The surveillance team watched as, repeatedly, teams of four men would climb into the boat, with two of them at the oars. The boat would drop two terrorists to the west bank of the river before returning to collect the next batch. This continued until a dozen infiltrators had been transported to the side of the river where the Army ambush teams lay in wait.

  A soldier in one of the ambush parties remembers the scene that played out over the next few minutes, starlight painting the darkness with a faint milkiness, made possible by how high above sea level Gurez sector is—8000 feet .

  ‘As we were watching, within a few minutes, they all crossed the river and started moving in the direction of Lt Navdeep and Naib Subedar Ganpati’s ambush parties,’ the soldier says. ‘They were slowly approaching the nallah where these two ambush teams were stationed. Naib Subedar Ganpati’s team was one side of the nallah, and 25 m away was Lt Navdeep’s party on the other side, closer to Rana. There was a small nallah behind Lt Navdeep’s position too, so his party was sandwiched between two nallahs.’

  From the Rana base operations room, where he was receiving a stream of real-time inputs from the surveillance team, Col. Girish got on the radio with Lt Navdeep and Naib Subedar Ganpati, who were leading the two ambush parties closest to the unit base, a distance of about 500 m.

  ‘Navdeep, Ganpati, here is what you will do—try and engage the infiltrators when they reach a point between both your parties along the riverbank,’ Col. Girish said over the radio. ‘From there, both of your positions can bring the group under combined fire from two directions and ensure sure-shot kills.’

  The CO needed to stay at the base to provide crucial command
and control to the unfolding operation.

  ‘Navdeep, stay calm and wait till they are between your two parties,’ Col. Girish called in. ‘Once trapped there, there will be no escape for them. But wait till they get there. Under no circumstances should you fire early.’

  The two ambush parties were positioned behind sangars, 1 their weapons ready and waiting. Their CO at Rana, half a kilometre away, had given them broad guidance on what to do next, but he knew that the final call could only really be taken by his men on the ground.

  ‘I was depending on the surveillance guy for the latest inputs,’ says Col. Girish. ‘He allowed them to come as close to the Navdeep–Ganpati point as possible. The standing order was to wait till they were very close, then take the call and open fire.’

  Seconds later, the group of terrorist infiltrators appeared in front of Naib Subedar Ganpati’s ambush party. By this time, Lt Navdeep could see the group too.

  The infiltrators were walking in a tactical single file, their weapons raised and ready. They were taking no chances either. The high-altitude Gurez sector comprises a scattering of villages that are largely friendly to the Army, and therefore provide no safe havens or stop-over points for terrorists crossing the LoC and making their way into the Kashmir Valley. There is a steady flow of infiltrators in this sector, but those who manage to sneak in successfully never stay too long in Gurez, using it only as a transit route before disappearing into the hinterlands of Bandipora and onward to the Kashmir Valley.

  ‘Ganpati, hold fire,’ Lt Navdeep called into his radio. ‘Koi fire nahi karega until my orders.’

  From behind his sangar, Lt Navdeep counted each terrorist as they all stepped into the range of his weapon just 10 m in front of him. The number of terrorists on foot was now clear—there were nine of them. Some of them had scarves wrapped around their heads. Others didn’t. All of them had rucksacks and assault rifles. Finger on trigger, every man in the two ambush parties held his breath.

  Eight metres.

  ‘This young officer was demonstrating an amazing measure of resolve in allowing the terrorists to come close enough to finish them,’ says a soldier from Naib Subedar Ganpati’s ambush party. ‘It was hard to imagine he had joined the Army just five months before. Every word he spoke was with confidence. He was sure of the order he was giving. There was no hesitation in his voice.’

  ‘Sa’ab, ab fire karte hain (Let’s fire now),’ came a whisper from Lt Navdeep’s left. It was his buddy soldier, Sepoy Vijay Gajre, a jawan who had joined the Army only the year before. He was, in effect, the other baby of the unit.

  Lt Navdeep signalled to him to wait.

  ‘Aur paas aane do, Vijay. Aur thoda paas. Unke chehre dikhne chahiye (Let them come closer, Vijay. A little closer. We should be able to see their faces),’ Lt Navdeep said.

  Five metres.

  Lt Navdeep looked to his buddy for a moment, nodding. Every one of the infiltrators had stopped at a position between the two ambush parties and they were now just 5 m away. A few minutes past midnight, the young officer gave the order to open fire.

  The sequence was thus: the infiltrators had been spotted at 11.30 p.m. The ambush teams had been deployed by 11.45 p.m. And at 12.03 a.m., the first bullets flew.

  ‘The terrorists were barely 5 m from Navdeep when he ordered the men to open up their weapons at them,’ says Col. Girish, who heard the first shots fired over the radio, but could also hear them echo from the site half a kilometre away. ‘The terrorists were around 20 m from Naib Subedar Ganpati’s ambush team. Once Navdeep opened fire, everyone began firing simultaneously.’

  The decision to wait till the last moment had paid off. The first hail of bullets from the two ambush parties instantly killed eight of the infiltrators. A sniper from an ambush party further downstream shot and killed three more terrorists who were still in the dinghy that had brought them. Across the river, the surveillance team spotted three more infiltrators break into a run back to the LoC once the firing began.

  Of the nine terrorists ambushed by Lt Navdeep and Naib Subedar Ganpati’s men, one had sustained a gunshot wound but was still alive. He picked himself up and crouched between two small boulders on the riverbank. From that position, he began to fire at Lt Navdeep’s team.

  ‘He had taken such a position that our team could not fire directly at him; only Navdeep’s could,’ says the soldier on Naib Subedar Ganpati’s team.

  Lt Navdeep kept his squad’s fire focused on the space around and between the boulders, pinning down the last terrorist. As the firing continued, the terrorist lobbed a grenade from behind his cover towards Lt Navdeep’s position.

  The grenade smashed into the sangar Lt Navdeep and his team were using for cover and exploded, sending shrapnel flying everywhere. The men dived for cover, but a splinter hit Lt Navdeep’s buddy soldier, Sepoy Vijay, throwing him off his feet, a wound torn into his shoulder.

  ‘Vijay , tum theek ho (Are you okay)?’ Lt Navdeep screamed over the gunfire, crawling up to his buddy as the six other men in the ambush party continued to fire at the last terrorist behind the boulders.

  ‘Sa’ab, laga hai par chhota ghaav hai (I’m hurt, but not badly),’ Sepoy Vijay said. ‘Main theek hoon (I’m fine).’

  ‘Tum neeche raho, Vijay, main sambhal loonga (Stay down, Vijay, I’ll take care of this),’ Lt Navdeep said, as he pulled his buddy soldier closer to the sangar. Sepoy Vijay slouched, with his back against the fortification, bleeding profusely. He looked up at the young officer, who had got to his knees and begun firing again.

  ‘Sa’ab, sambhal ke (Be careful),’ Sepoy Vijay said. ‘Give me a few minutes, I will pick up my weapon again.’

  ‘Neeche raho (Stay where you are),’ Lt Navdeep said. ‘Yeh khatam hone wala hai (This is about to end).’

  Lt Navdeep raised his head a few inches to get a better look at precisely where the last terrorist was—whether he had changed his position from behind the boulders while still firing. At that precise moment, one bullet came flying in, grazed the edge of Lt Navdeep’s bulletproof patka and went straight through his head. Just as he was hit, Lt Navdeep squeezed the trigger of his own AK-47, sending a burst of ammunition straight into the face of the last terrorist. Five metres apart, both fell in their positions at the same time.

  A few seconds passed and the guns fell silent. It had been just 5 minutes since the first bullets were fired. Back at Rana, Col. Girish received a radio message from a Havildar in Lt Navdeep’s squad.

  ‘Navdeep sa’ab ko goli lagi hai (Navdeep Sir has been hit),’ he told the CO.

  ‘Goli kahan lagi hai (Where has he been hit)?’

  ‘Sa’ab, sar par (In the head, Sir).’

  Col. Girish told the Havildar not to worry, and immediately sent a column of troops from Rana to remove Lt Navdeep and his buddy from the encounter site. Naib Subedar Ganpati had also suffered a splinter injury in the grenade attack. An ambulance was summoned. Fifteen minutes later, at Rana, a doctor examined Lt Navdeep. He still had a pulse when he was moved from the banks of the Kishenganga.

  At 12.30 a.m., a doctor at the base pronounced him dead.

  All the ambush squads remained in their positions till sunrise, as the surveillance team had alerted them to the possibility of more infiltrators lurking in the vicinity. In the clean-up operation that morning, the bodies of twelve terrorists were recovered from two different sites—the banks of the Kishenganga near Lt Navdeep’s post, and the dinghy on the banks of the river about 200 m downstream, where they had crossed.

  At 9 a.m. on 20 August, one of the search parties reported seeing a trail of blood leading into a large meadow to the west of Kanzalwan village. This suggested that a certain number of terrorists had survived the ambush and escaped with their lives. The meadow led to a hilly, forested stretch and on to two more small villages, Bagtore and Taarbal, the final settlements before the LoC.

  ‘We launched a search operation again but couldn’t find anyone,’ says Col. Girish. ‘But I didn’t move the
boys from the ambush sites for the next two days. They were being fed on site. My gut feeling was that if there were some injured terrorists, they would try to return to the other side of the LoC rather than try to go deeper into our area. The area had to be sanitized.’

  His suspicions proved correct. Two days later, on 22 August, one of the ambush parties that was patrolling near the LoC fence spotted a terrorist crouched behind a pine tree. In a brief firefight, the thirteenth terrorist was shot in the head by Havildar Zore Bapu Bhagoji. The terrorist had a gunshot wound on his hand from the firefight two days ago.

  ‘The terrorist had torn off a piece of his shirt and tied it around his hand to prevent blood loss. His hand was swollen. He was firing with one hand,’ says a soldier who was part of that search team.

  Lt Navdeep had fallen after killing four terrorists that night, his decision to wait until the final moment ensuring that most of the infiltration group was eliminated in the first few seconds—crucial to the success of the operation.

  The dead terrorists had plenty in their rucksacks to sustain them for a long and potentially damaging operation. They were carrying a large load of paranthas, dates, anti-venom ampoules and morphine, with each man also hauling ten ammunition magazines, grenades and military-grade night sights. It was enough material to last them a full week without having to seek local shelter or support of any kind.

  Hours after he was pronounced dead, Lt Navdeep’s body was flown 500 km to his home in Gurdaspur, accompanied by another officer of the unit and a senior soldier.

  As the flag-draped casket arrived at the family home, Lt Navdeep’s father, Subedar Joginder Singh, stepped out, his eyes dry.

  ‘Mera beta lada na? Achhe se lada! Kitne aatankwadi maare usne? (My boy fought, didn’t he? He fought well! How many terrorists did he kill)?’ he asked the Army personnel who had accompanied the body.

  Subedar Joginder Singh, who retired as an Honorary Captain from the Army’s Corps of Engineers, was overjoyed when his son, unenthused by life after a hotel management degree and an MBA, had decided to join the Army. He would be the third generation from the family to put on the olive-greens.