India's Most Fearless 2

by Shiv Aroor

  Lt Cdr Firdaus’s family and comrades in the Navy remember him as an officer who unstintingly stood up for the men who served under him.

  ‘“My men are my world,” he would say. Everybody will be good to seniors. Real honour is in how you are with your men,’ says Kerzin.

  Yashaan Mogal is an avid reader. He even reads the Indian Navy journals his mother has collected that contain details of the incident in which his father died.

  ‘Many of Yashaan’s teachers say it’s amazing how this child doesn’t need counselling,’ says Kerzin. ‘He’s a proud and happy kid. He loves talking about his father. When I see and hear that, I feel I can rest easy.’

  Kerzin still feels very much a part of the military community in Mumbai. She gets frequent calls from the Navy asking her if she’s all right, or if there’s anything the service can help her with. She often attends Navy events when she’s invited. The one thing she usually declines, though, are the evening functions and dinners.

  ‘I avoid going because I see men in uniform and it’s hard for me not to see Firdaus there,’ says Kerzin. ‘We would go to these together.’

  In January 2011, six months after the incident at sea, when Kerzin Mogal arrived in Delhi to receive her husband’s posthumous Shaurya Chakra gallantry decoration, a senior Naval officer accosted her at the Rashtrapati Bhavan ceremony.

  ‘He said your husband need not have gone into the water,’ says Kerzin. ‘His uniform did not tell him to do that. I remember telling this gentleman that he did not know Firdaus. If he were to be in the same situation again, he would go back into the water again and save the six people that he did. Some people are meant to be heroes. It’s what I’ve always said to console and heal myself. Saving those men was his motive. Many of us live without motive. Firdaus just saw it in black and white. He faced no dilemma. He had absolute clarity about what he had to do. I keep saying this—I know in my heart he would have done it again.’

  The Shaurya Chakra citation now adorns a wall in Kerzin’s living room. It reads:

  Lieutenant Commander Firdaus Darabshah Mogal displayed exceptional courage, unmatched show of fearless valour in the face of death and made the supreme sacrifice in saving the lives of six men.

  Initially sensitive to questions, Kerzin is now used to them.

  ‘Somebody once asked, when he jumped into the water, did he not think about his child and his wife? And I say, no,’ she says.

  ‘I know Firdaus. He was thinking of nothing but his men drowning.’

  9

  ‘Just Tell Me when to Begin, Sir’

  Captain Pradeep Shoury Arya

  Bengaluru

  10 May 2017

  ‘Promise me one thing—that you will be alive to receive your medals. And that I won’t have to do it on your behalf. Promise me, Pradeep.’

  Deepa Arya chuckled nervously. At the other end of the phone line, there was silence. But she could tell he was smiling. It was the sort of verbal ambush Capt. Pradeep Shoury Arya had only been half prepared for in the three years since he began doing what he did.

  It was their thirteenth wedding anniversary that day, 10 May 2017. He had promised to celebrate it with Deepa at their Bengaluru home. But his flight out of Mumbai a week ago had taken him in the opposite direction.

  Capt. Pradeep disconnected the call from a Special Forces camp in Uri in Jammu and Kashmir’s Baramulla area. Contemplating Deepa’s words, Capt. Pradeep walked back to the cramped dormitory he shared with three other officers. Unlike them, he knew he didn’t fully belong here. For the Captain wasn’t an Army officer at all; he was from the Indian Revenue Service (IRS), a comfortably settled tax bureaucrat who had made a career choice that most who knew him would blame on a moment of insanity.

  Eight days earlier, on a sultry Mumbai afternoon at his Ballard Estate office, Pradeep Shoury Arya had placed piles of tax papers aside for a quick lunch of his favourite grilled fish. Work didn’t stop, though. As he ate, he pored over an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report on money laundering and terror financing, a subject he had grown increasingly obsessed with. Three minutes into lunch, his cell phone rang. It was a call he couldn’t dodge.

  ‘Pack your bags, buddy, and take the first flight out of Mumbai. Details after you reach the location,’ said the caller. Capt. Pradeep instinctively straightened in his seat, placing his fork with a bit of fish still on it down on the plate with a gentle clang.

  The caller was the CO of a Para Special Forces unit operating in Jammu and Kashmir’s volatile Uri sector near the LoC—a place where nineteen Army soldiers had been killed in a devastating terror attack that had shaken the entire country eight months before. It was an attack that had sparked the devastating surgical strikes of 29 September 2016, which left thirty-six terrorists and two Pakistani Army personnel dead in one of India’s most brutal revenge missions till date.

  ‘On my way immediately, Sir. Jai Hind,’ Capt. Pradeep said. If details were to be provided later, it meant there was no room for questions or clarifications now. The only thing to do was to move, and fast.

  Except that he was a taxman.

  As an Additional Commissioner of Income Tax for International Taxation, Capt. Pradeep couldn’t just get up and leave whenever he got a call. He was a Captain in India’s Territorial Army, but he still needed leave from his boss in the Income Tax department when the Army needed him. Reserve troops from the Territorial Army, which Capt. Pradeep had joined in 2009, come from all walks of life and are required to operate alongside regular soldiers for at least two months each year, though they are expected to answer calls at any reasonable time. Capt. Pradeep was a reservist attached to a Special Forces unit in the Kashmir Valley. If his full-time work garb involved shirts, ironed trousers and formal shoes, his other job allowed him to wear the coveted maroon beret of India’s most lethal soldiers. Capt. Pradeep would jump into combat fatigues in minutes if he could.

  But first, he needed leave.

  Capt. Pradeep quickly tossed the IMF report he was reading into a drawer. The report was central to his growing expertise in how terror networks raise and move money, and how that financing could be disrupted. The officer’s talent for detail in the murky world of terror financing had been recognized a few months earlier, in January 2017, when he was awarded the Chief of Army Staff’s commendation for a useful data report he had generated tracking fundraising methods employed to fuel terrorism and anti-state activities in Jammu and Kashmir. The report he had been reading had confirmed many of his suspicions, which he would further study. But the phone call from his CO meant he would have to read it another time.

  He moved quickly. A flight to Delhi had to be booked, a promise to be with his wife in Bengaluru for their thirteenth wedding anniversary had to be broken. And a long overdue evening with friends at the popular Leopold Café in Colaba had to be called off. The really tricky part would be seeking leave from his boss, Charanjeet Gulati, the Commissioner of Income Tax. His reasons were solid—a tour of duty in Kashmir—but as Capt. Pradeep walked towards his boss’s cabin, he knew he would still have to make a persuasive argument. He wasn’t going to be pleased at all, Capt. Pradeep thought to himself as he knocked on the cabin door.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, are you saying you are going to be away for a couple of months again? This is utterly unbelievable,’ the Income Tax Commissioner spluttered, staring at Capt. Pradeep in disbelief.

  ‘Sir, I am sure we can find a solution,’ Capt. Pradeep said quietly, hoping the conversation would end soon so he could go home to pack.

  ‘If you have to go to Kashmir so often, then who will work for the department? Why don’t you take a long break and do what you have to do, Arya?’ his boss snapped.

  ‘Sir, the call was from the CO himself. I have to reach Uri as soon as possible. You know how things are in Kashmir,’ Capt. Pradeep said, a touch of apology in his voice. His boss’s irritation wasn’t unreasonable, considering Capt. Pradeep had been spending more time with the Special Forces uni
t than the minimum required under the rules for an Army reservist. Instead of the compulsory two months, he had been out on missions for four to six months in each of the previous two years.

  His boss sighed.

  ‘And when do you intend to leave?’

  ‘Tomorrow. As soon as possible, Sir.’

  The drive from Ballard Estate to Capt. Pradeep’s Malabar Hill apartment overlooking the Arabian Sea took 20 minutes that evening, giving him enough time to make the required phone calls to his family in Bengaluru and the friends who would be nursing hangovers the following morning.

  After an early dinner, Capt. Pradeep called it a night. Staring at the ceiling in the dark, he wondered about the reason he had been summoned. He thought of his Special Forces comrades in Kashmir, men for whom a full night’s sleep was a rare gift. However, he knew this was likely to be his last predictable night for the foreseeable future and soon fell asleep.

  On an early morning flight to Delhi the next day, Capt. Pradeep was typically restless, his mind crowded with thoughts of the new ‘adventure’ that lay ahead.

  ‘My CO hadn’t dropped a single clue. I had no idea what I had been summoned for. And I was restless to get there and find out,’ says Capt. Pradeep.

  His CO, an Army Colonel, had become something of a cult figure after the September 2016 surgical strikes on terror camps in PoK. 1 He had received a Yudh Seva Medal for the operation that would blast its way into popular culture in the following months and become both a strategic and political buzzword.

  The Special Forces unit under the Colonel’s charge, to which Capt. Pradeep is attached, played a central role in the blistering covert action behind enemy lines, a mission that drew attention to India’s hardened political resolve in the face of repeated terror provocations from Islamabad, as well as its military capability to strike terror havens on the hostile territory beyond the LoC.

  Catching a connecting flight from Delhi to Srinagar, Capt. Pradeep settled into his seat for a 40-minute nap. He was certain sleep would be elusive once he landed and made his way to the base he had been summoned to.

  ‘Normally, I would be called to the unit once a month for about a week. But this time, I was told I should be prepared to stay back for a couple of months. That was straightaway unusual,’ says Capt. Pradeep. What he was certain about was that he was headed to a site of action.

  Darkness had enveloped Uri by the time he reached the quiet and secluded base, where he was greeted by familiar fragrances, a faint breeze whispering through the chinar trees and some of the Army’s most elite fighters with long hair and full beards, not uncommon among Para commandos operating in Kashmir.

  ‘What took you so long? We were expecting you earlier,’ said an officer, high-fiving Capt. Pradeep as he stepped out of his jeep.

  ‘I stopped at Khunmoh [near Srinagar] to meet the boys from 106. You know I always do that,’ said Capt. Pradeep, referring to his parent unit, the 106 Infantry Battalion Territorial Army (Para).

  ‘Well, the CO should be here any moment. He’s coming from Udhampur,’ said the officer.

  ‘I am dying to meet him. Let’s stick around till “Tiger” comes,’ Capt. Pradeep said.

  The Army’s Northern Command, headquartered in Udhampur, serves as the nerve centre for the command and control of all Army operations along the LoC with Pakistan. COs from Special Forces and other units are frequently summoned to Udhampur to brief seniors on missions or plans.

  Minutes later, the CO’s vehicle screeched to a halt inside the base and the muscular six-foot-tall officer stepped out. Respected highly by his men—his credentials burnished even more after the 2016 surgical strikes—the Colonel cut a menacing figure in his battle fatigues, enveloped by an unmistakable aura of authority.

  ‘Good to have you back with us,’ the Colonel said, flashing Capt. Pradeep a grin. ‘You are curious, aren’t you? You were always looking for that great adventure and there’s one coming your way.’ And without another word, the Colonel walked into the camp quarters.

  Capt. Pradeep knew there was no use pushing to know more. He would be told about his mission when the CO was ready, and not a moment earlier. Fortunately, he only needed to wait till dinner to find out why he had been summoned at such short notice, and why he had been asked to stay back almost indefinitely.

  At dinner that night at the camp mess, the CO finally got down to briefing Capt. Pradeep and the others.

  Intelligence had been gathered that week pointing to unusual activity across the LoC, with military-style terrorist infiltration squads biding their time to slip into Kashmir. The information was apparently solid and required a careful but urgent follow-up with a full-fledged action plan. And Capt. Pradeep was being put in charge.

  Capt. Pradeep remembered the jarring images of death and havoc at the Uri Army base from eight months earlier. The base had been struck by a four-man infiltration squad from across the LoC in a nightmarish assault that left nineteen soldiers dead. The pre-dawn strike at the base, rimmed by verdant hills, had taken place in this Special Forces unit’s own backyard, and the stinging memories had scarcely faded.

  Following India’s revenge attacks a few days later, Pakistan was keen to keep the terror pot simmering despite a heightened alert along the LoC.

  Capt. Pradeep’s CO had told him that the broader intelligence picture pointed to a strong possibility of brazen attempts by terror cells to infiltrate Kashmir in the course of the next few days or weeks.

  ‘The CO gave me a clear mandate to establish a robust intelligence network involving a variety of elements, and simultaneously, prepare my squad to ambush the infiltrators before they could set foot on our soil,’ he says.

  It was a simple enough job to describe. Capt. Pradeep needed to corroborate intelligence, establish an intelligence network of his own to fine-tune the information and then act upon it with all the force at his disposal. But nothing about it was remotely elementary. Terrorists, aided by the Pakistan Army and Inter-Services Intelligence, frequently altered plans and locations for infiltration, leaving Indian units guessing till the last moment—sometimes also being caught off guard, with devastating consequences.

  As he headed towards the barracks later that night, the single thought that gripped Capt. Pradeep was how a few hours had taken him from a grilled fish lunch in upscale Mumbai to the prospect of a fight to the death in one of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones. He contemplated Kashmir’s steady and obvious slide back into chaos, with the chances of normalcy dispiritingly remote. The mission at hand for him was but a dot in a larger constellation of threats. But a dot missed, he remembered someone telling him, could make all the difference.

  It was early May and the border state was wrestling with what was turning out to be an especially grim year, a tumultuous phase that Pakistani Army-backed terrorists were seeking to exploit to the fullest. Still smarting from the humiliation and damage of the previous year’s surgical strikes, Pakistan’s Army was ratcheting up efforts to stir up trouble in Kashmir by dispatching commando-trained terror graduates from the camps, running with its full support and funding, in PoK.

  ‘They are up to their old tricks again. But there is no way we will let them succeed,’ thought Capt. Pradeep, as he settled into his bunk for the night.

  There was nothing remarkable about the barracks at the Special Forces base except its occupants, and the special weapons their dangerous missions afforded them. Capt. Pradeep shared his dormitory with three other officers, and the small attached toilet was the only luxury. It was a far cry from living in one of Mumbai’s most exclusive neighbourhoods. He was equally at ease in either world, but secretly loved the austere barracks and the company of these fellow officers he had worked with since he had been attached to the unit in 2015. Their respect for him was inflected with a laughing curiosity—why would a comfortable tax babu living the good life want to be in the Special Forces?

  Everyone knew the story, though.

  It all began a few ye
ars ago with a conversation between the Army’s Lt Gen. Subrata Saha, then heading the Srinagar-based 15 Corps, and a senior IRS officer at the prestigious National Defence College in Delhi, where military and civilian officers are groomed for higher leadership positions.

  Lt Gen. Subrata, a scholarly three-star General, had just finished delivering a talk on civil–military cooperation when the senior bureaucrat introduced himself to the Corps Commander.

  ‘General, do you know that one of our IRS officers is serving in the Territorial Army? Maybe you can meet him and find a way to put his expertise to the best use,’ he said. Lt Gen. Subrata was pleasantly surprised—he didn’t know of any bureaucrat who was a military reservist. He made a quick mental note, took Capt. Pradeep’s details and a few days later, summoned him to the Badami Bagh Cantonment in Srinagar for a meeting.

  When he arrived, the General cut straight to the chase: ‘Arya, why don’t you consider conducting a study on money laundering and terror funding, and how we can combat these activities? It can be very useful in the context of Kashmir.’

  ‘Just tell me when to begin, Sir,’ Capt. Pradeep said.

  With the formalities completed a few weeks later, Capt. Pradeep moved to Srinagar for the new assignment. And after Lt Gen. Subrata was transferred to Delhi to take over as one of the Army’s two deputy chiefs, the Captain was attached to the Special Forces unit for the next phase of his study, and to also help provide intelligence on terror groups. When he heard about Capt. Pradeep’s expertise, the unit’s CO grabbed the opportunity with both hands. This man could be very useful, he thought.

  ‘I had had enough of the academic bit and longed to be part of actual operations that the unit was carrying out, the rough-and-tumble of the Special Forces. The peril, the action-packed adventures enticed me,’ Capt. Pradeep says.

  A notoriously gruelling three-month-long training course followed, which Pradeep describes as the ultimate test of endurance. Upon its completion, he was declared ready to join the ranks of the Special Forces as a Territorial Army officer and be counted among those who would go into combat with them. A higher vote of confidence was unheard of. The Special Forces are not known to outsource. As an outsider, Capt. Pradeep had been welcomed into a unit that normally drew its strength from a nightmarishly difficult training. The tax bureaucrat had proved worthy of the entrance examination. And now he was in.