India's Most Fearless 2

by Shiv Aroor

  What Maj. Satish didn’t let his men know immediately was that a bullet had found him too. The officer was wearing his bulletproof vest, but the round had pierced him in the gap between two plates and had ripped through a major artery. Minutes later, when his buddy soldier noticed the Major’s blood-drenched side, he insisted they pull back so the injured officer could get medical help. Maj. Satish refused, reassuring the soldier that he wasn’t badly injured, and that he couldn’t leave at that moment.

  The firefight was now a tense, pitched battle. Two terrorists, with a mound for cover, were firing at Maj. Satish and his buddy, who had their own knoll protecting them. Nearly ten minutes later, the terrorists began to fling grenades towards the periphery of the compound, where the other men of the inner cordon stood firing. It became clear that the terrorists were well-armed and had plenty of ammunition and grenades to draw out the encounter. And Maj. Satish knew that the longer they stretched it, the greater the chances were of the terrorists causing casualties among the cordon and finding a way through it to escape into the thickly forested hills of Handwara, which surround the village.

  In the crossfire, Maj. Satish heard muffled screams from behind him, outside the front gate. Three soldiers from his company, who had been providing covering fire from a few metres away, had been hit by grenade splinters and were seriously injured. Maj. Satish quickly ordered all three men to be pulled out of the firefight, but chose to remain where he was. By this time, he had lost a great deal of blood and had begun to feel dizzy. He made one final call to his CO, informing him that he was going to mount a flank attack on the two terrorists, in which he would crawl out from his position and creep up on the terrorists from the side where they had no cover. Col. Rajiv, by this time, had arrived at the encounter site with more men from 30 RR, deploying them up on the hills surrounding the house.

  ‘Satish insisted he wanted to get closer and finish them off,’ says Col. Rajiv. ‘He was the operational commander on the ground and best knew the situation. His assessment was that if he waited any longer, the terrorists would definitely kill some of his men. And I knew that was totally unacceptable to him.’

  Unknown to Maj. Satish, the three soldiers injured by the terrorists’ grenades would tragically succumb to their injuries. It was when the three men—Paratrooper Dharmendra Kumar, twenty-six, Rifleman Ravi Kumar, thirty-three, and Gunner Astosh Kumar, twenty-four—were hit that Maj. Satish decided to finish the encounter himself.

  The CO knew it was a delicate situation. He was speaking to an injured officer in the middle of a firefight. He asked Maj. Satish if he wished to pull back. But the officer requested that he be allowed to stay and finish the operation. Maj. Satish’s buddy soldier, who had been ordered to retreat towards the front gate of the house, received a call from the CO asking about Maj. Satish’s condition.

  ‘Buri tarah lagi hai, Sir, par khatam karke hi aayenge (He’s grievously injured, Sir, but he’ll pull back only when he’s finished them),’ the soldier said.

  Despite the heavy bleeding, Maj. Satish crawled out from his secure position on his elbows, making his way from the side towards the clump that protected the two remaining terrorists, who continued to direct their fire to the front. Taking aim, his bullet killed one. The other let out a burst of fire, narrowly missing Maj. Satish, and bolted towards the hills, only to be felled minutes later by outer cordon troops waiting for precisely such an eventuality.

  With the firefight at an end, two soldiers rushed forward to check on Maj. Satish, who had, by this time, slumped in his position and was in and out of consciousness. They carried the Major out of the front gate, where a Tata Sumo vehicle had been arranged to transport the injured officer to a makeshift helipad that had been coordinated minutes after Maj. Satish had been shot.

  His eyes still half-open, it seemed as if Maj. Satish wanted to speak, but didn’t have the strength. Nobody had the heart to tell the Major that three soldiers had lost their lives in the encounter. He blacked out as the car sped down the highway towards the helipad. A Dhruv helicopter carried him straight towards the 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar, a facility renowned for being able to repair any man with a pulse. But in that helicopter, shortly after 8 p.m., high above the mountains and forests of Kashmir he had come to love and know so well, Maj. Satish drew his final breath.

  In his pocket, his silent mobile phone continued to ring.

  At 8.15 p.m., Sujata received a call from a lady officer in the Army asking her how she was. The call was followed by a flurry of other calls from Maj. Satish’s colleagues in the Army. Now, breathless with anxiety, Sujata asked one of the callers, a course-mate of Maj. Satish, why everyone was calling her. After a moment’s pause, the course-mate informed her that her husband had been shot, but that he was recovering in hospital, that there was nothing to worry about. Sujata hung up immediately, dialling the CO of 30 RR. At this time, Col. Rajiv was still at Hajin Kralgund and couldn’t answer the phone.

  ‘I lit a diya in my small mandir,’ says Sujata. ‘My mind and heart were restless and I knew that something was wrong and that everybody was hiding it from me. Priyasha came to me, wondering why I was praying at that time. I usually pray only in the morning. Then the doorbell rang for the first time that day. I ran to the door.’

  A delivery man stood outside with a bouquet and a large red package. Sujata grabbed both, took them to the dining table and set them down. She paused for a moment. Then she carefully opened it. Inside was a heart-shaped cake and candles. She stared at it for a moment, then picked up her phone to try her husband’s number again. There was no answer.

  ‘I called every single person I had come to know in the Army over the last two years,’ says Sujata, ‘literally pleading with them to make me speak to Satish somehow. Most of them told me he was fine and that I should come to Srinagar. I still knew nothing. It was when my father arrived at 10.30 p.m. that my heart sank.’

  But even Sujata’s father, despite knowing what had happened, would say nothing specific to her, instead calming his daughter and telling her that everything would be all right. He also ensured that the television stayed off. News of Maj. Satish’s death had begun breaking on social media shortly before 9 p.m. and on television after 10 p.m.

  The next to arrive at the house was another Major from 30 RR who was on leave in Jaipur at the time. He told Sujata he was there to help in any way, and if necessary, would take her to Srinagar to visit her husband.

  ‘Nobody was telling me anything clearly,’ Sujata says. ‘When I pressed my father, he said the Army had told him that Satish was under observation. Everybody was too scared to tell me the truth. I wasn’t even admitting it to myself. My heart was praying that these comforting words were true, that Satish was only injured and that he would return my call soon.’

  By midnight, with neighbours and Army personnel at her home but still no clear answers to her questions, Sujata begged her father to take her to Delhi so she could catch a flight to Srinagar the first thing next morning.

  ‘I was on the road at night and tried the CO’s number again,’ says Sujata. ‘A voice at the other end, which I did not recognize, told me not to come to Srinagar. They had obviously heard that I was headed to Delhi to take the next flight out. Then the CO came on the line. His voice was breaking with emotion, and he finally told me that Satish was gone, and that I have to take care of myself and Priyasha now.’

  Sujata’s father directed the cab driver to change course and head to Narnaul in Haryana, the village where Maj. Satish’s parents lived.

  ‘After that, I don’t remember anything,’ says Sujata. ‘I went totally blank. Priyasha was on my lap. I wasn’t crying. I was just in a daze.’

  Sujata had carried nothing with her but the bouquet of flowers and the Valentine’s Day cake.

  In Narnaul the next morning, huge crowds had gathered on the road leading up to the home of the Dahiya family. Several officers and soldiers from the Army were there too. That evening, amid loud chants in his honou
r, Maj. Satish’s flag-draped casket was brought home.

  Surrounded by mourners and friends from the Army, Sujata’s calm finally shattered. In front of television cameras that had streamed into the Dahiya house that evening, she wept uncontrollably. The sound of her wails would be broadcast across the country. Priyasha, too young to fully understand what was going on, would be carried by an uncle to light her father’s pyre not far from their home.

  ‘Priyasha lives in the belief that her father is alive somewhere,’ Sujata says. ‘She asks me sometimes when her Papa will come. I have a few audio and video clips of Satish, which I make her watch or hear every now and then, so she feels she has actually spoken to Satish. I order things online and say her father has sent gifts for her. She has begun to insist now on meeting her father. She is very young. I have to take it slow. Maybe, in a few years, she will understand.’

  Sujata left Jaipur weeks later to move to Delhi, where she now lives. She hopes to begin a job soon.

  ‘I take out Satish’s uniform every few days and look at it,’ she says. ‘It has the place marked where he was hit by the bullet. It is washed and cleaned and kept in my cupboard.’

  Two days after the funeral, on their fifth wedding anniversary, Sujata would learn from a travel agent that her husband had booked a four-day holiday in April for them at the Taj Vivanta in Goa, a place Sujata had longed to visit but hadn’t had the chance. The holiday was to coincide with Priyasha’s second birthday. Growing up in landlocked towns, the two had often spoken about a holiday at the seaside.

  Meanwhile, search operations for other members of the Afzal Guru Squad continued for nearly two weeks after the Hajin Kralgund operation. It was only twelve days later that Col. Rajiv would get the time to visit Maj. Satish’s family in Narnaul.

  ‘His father is a very bold personality,’ says Col. Rajiv. ‘And Satish was a very good son. The way he looked after his parents was truly commendable. He understood his responsibility to them very well. Whenever he went home, he would find out if there was anything he could do to help the village. A street in the village and a nearby college are now rightly named after him.’

  ‘When I think about the Hajin encounter, a part of me wonders what would have happened if Satish had survived,’ says a Lieutenant Colonel from 30 RR who was part of the mission. ‘He was obsessively concerned about the welfare of his men. I wonder whether he would have been able to digest the news that three soldiers were lost in the operation. It was the most unacceptable thing to him. That’s why his men worshipped him.’

  Weeks before the Hajin operation, Col. Rajiv had visited Maj. Satish’s highly secured jungle post, a base he had meticulously protected with five layers of fencing.

  ‘I told him we were both at the fag end of our tenures with 30 RR,’ says Col. Rajiv. ‘I told him it was okay if I wrapped up my tenure without eliminating those three terrorists, but Satish Dahiya would never be okay if he moved on without finishing the job, this hardcore group that had inflicted so many casualties on our security forces. Satish said, “I promise you, I won’t leave the paltan till I eliminate them.”’

  Months after the operation, Maj. Satish’s source in the Hajin Kralgund encounter resurfaced after having gone underground for safety. In a message sent to another officer designated to replace Maj. Satish in the event of the end of his tenure—or worse—he said Kashmir would miss Maj. Satish.

  ‘He wanted to play his small role in ending the militancy here,’ the source said. ‘I hope Kashmir will not forget that.’

  8

  ‘Climb over Me, Get to the Submarine!’

  Lieutenant Commander Firdaus Mogal

  Arabian Sea, 220 km off the Mumbai coast

  30 August 2010, 6.55 a.m.

  ‘THREE MEN OVERBOARD, SIR!’

  Seventy feet from where he stood watch on the periscope tower, Lt Cdr Firdaus Mogal had just witnessed three sailors on the submarine’s back being violently flung several feet out into the churning Arabian Sea.

  The sun had just risen, and as the submarine violently bobbed and pitched in the swell, it was clear to the Executive Officer (XO in military parlance) that the three heads in the water were drifting helplessly away—and fast. He knew a minute wasted would mean the possibility of losing those men. Using his walkie-talkie, he quickly relayed what had happened to the control room. A reply crackled back in. It was the submarine’s CO, informing Lt Cdr Firdaus that two sailors were being sent up to go after the three men who had been thrown overboard.

  ‘There’s no time, I’m going after them,’ Lt Cdr Firdaus shouted down the shaft to the submarine’s bridge. As he did so, he saw two combat divers hastily clambering up the ladder from the control room to join him. As they heaved themselves up through the hatch, the three men felt a familiar wave of vibrations course through the submarine. Their CO had just switched the submarine’s engines slowly back on to stand by for the rescue.

  And just as the three leapt off the back of their submarine into the heaving swell, Lt Cdr Firdous knew he was about to enter a realm he loved and felt most comfortable in.

  Mumbai naval dockyard

  Fifteen hours earlier

  ‘All set and good to go, Sir,’ Lt Cdr Firdaus said, as he welcomed the submarine’s CO on board at the jetty. Cdr Gangupomu Murali, the last to walk the gangplank leading into the submarine, returned the younger officer’s salute. With the full crew on board, the submarine was ready to depart. The submarine skipper and his second-in-command would be leading a crew of forty on a mission to practise action in a situation that all submariners see in their worst nightmares.

  The 211-feet-long and twenty-four-year-old INS Shankush dived beneath the surface shortly after sailing out of Mumbai’s harbour. The German-built Type 209, one of four attack submarines that the Indira Gandhi government had ordered in 1981, headed straight out into the Arabian Sea for a combat war game that seemed straight out of a Cold War-era film.

  INS Shankush was all set to play the quarry in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, as part of an annual exercise with the French Navy code named ‘Varuna’. From the first week of August onwards, the submarine would test the fearsome tracking and detection capabilities of two warships—the Indian Navy’s INS Brahmaputra and the French Navy’s FNS Dupleix —both purpose-built to hunt and destroy submarines. The crew of Shankush , on its part, would need to dodge the two marauding warships using a combination of silence and evasive electronic techniques. The ships wouldn’t be dropping real weapons at the submarine, and INS Shankush wouldn’t be letting loose any of its deadly torpedoes. But the idea of a war game like Varuna was that the men on board all three vessels performed as if they were in a real war. And pretending isn’t difficult. The sound of sensor ‘pings’ and the distinct tone that blares when a ship’s sonar ‘locks’ on to a submarine, indicating to the crew of the submarine that it has been detected, would make a submariner’s skin crawl in any circumstance.

  Even the skin of a seasoned submariner.

  Lt Cdr Firdaus had opted for the submarine arm of the Indian Navy. A fully voluntary division that permits entry only to sailors and officers who make a certain cut, the submarine arm, like the military Special Forces, requires additional conditioning, both physical and psychological, given the consistently isolated and menacing circumstances that submariners work in as part of their routine duties at sea. It isn’t often that military cadets are clear about what they want to specialize in, even if they’ve chosen between the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. It’s rarer still for anyone to join a military academy with the singular intention of choosing to work in submarines.

  Lt Cdr Firdaus, on the other hand, had been clear from the day he entered NDA, Pune, that he wanted to be a submariner, spending his years there becoming a masterful swimmer, diver and a prodigious young authority on the history of submarining. When a course-mate asked him why he was so stubborn about joining the submarine arm, cadet Firdaus had regarded him and asked with mock horror, ‘How can you want to do a
nything else?’

  When INS Shankush sank below the waves and accelerated out into the Arabian Sea, it was just another day on the job for the young officer. But as his body got used to the familiar, gentle hum of the submarine’s diesel-electric motors and the warm glow of the lamps that lined the single thin corridor that ran from end to end, he never forgot for even a moment that he was living a real dream.

  Lt Cdr Firdaus and his CO had final discussions with the crew on what lay ahead. As XO, Lt Cdr Firdaus was second-in-command. As INS Shankush cruised 50 feet below the sea’s surface, he walked the length of the submarine that night, speaking with the crew and conducting a list of final checks. It would be past midnight when the XO returned to his cabin for a few hours of sleep before the next day’s drills.

  Churning the depths with a low roar, INS Shankush ’s large rear propeller would push it far out into the Arabian Sea overnight, into a section of the ocean where the submarine would spend the following day, 30 August, practising a few manoeuvres before the arrival of the Indian and French warships.

  Back on shore in Mumbai, Kerzin Mogal lay awake. As a submariner’s wife, she was used to being cut off from her husband for days at a time. Dinner a few hours earlier with Firdaus and their twenty-month-old son, Yashaan, had been quiet. She wouldn’t be seeing him for at least the next ten days. After five years of marriage, words seemed almost unnecessary to fill the silence that hung over a now familiar mood just before departure. Seeing her husband off at the door with a hug, Kerzin put their son to bed and retired to her room with a book. Two hours later, making an involuntary mental note that Firdaus’s submarine had probably just slipped beneath the waves, Kerzin fell asleep.