India's Most Fearless 2

by Shiv Aroor

  The other major lesson from the debrief was the intricate detailing and design of the operation. The large number of moving parts—when and where the terrorists would cross, the number of terrorists, how well they would be armed, and whether they would split up after being challenged, to name a few. Luring them into a zone of no escape was therefore both critical as well as an enormous challenge. And with all of these difficult variables, there were still the minute levels of planning that needed to be built into the operation even as it rolled out. Fighting effectively at night, for instance, was a certainty, and the squads were armed for it. But they needed to take it a step further to face an infiltration squad.

  ‘The moon was in its first quarter at the time, so there was not much moonlight,’ Maj. Preetam says. ‘It’s almost pitch dark and an intense firefight is on. So how do I spot my buddy? We can talk over the Motorola radio sets, but what if I need to know his exact location? We had passive night-vision goggles, which emit an infrared blip when you press a button on the side. Those IR lights can be seen through passive night-vision sets only. You can see a red dot. So the moment I see a red dot, I know it’s a man from my squad. This is how we knew who was where.’

  There was the additional challenge of targeting the terrorists accurately in the dark.

  ‘We were also carrying laser pointers with us,’ explains Maj. Preetam. ‘Say, your buddy has spotted some movement, but you haven’t—he will direct you to that movement with the laser light. The fifth terrorist was killed with the help of a laser pointer. One of the buddy pairs directed the laser at him, and following the pointer, the CO’s buddy lobbed a grenade and killed him. We had kept it simple. No one would laser in the direction of our parties’ positions. Jahan mein laser karunga, wahan bina soche ya time waste kare wahan fire karna hai (Where I point the laser, just fire in that direction without thinking or wasting time). It was a simple plan. Once the target is painted by the laser, just fire or throw a grenade.’

  The six terrorists killed that night were all Pakistani nationals from the LeT. Their rucksacks contained enough rations and ammunition for a major strike—bigger than the September 2016 attack at the Uri Brigade headquarters. The encounter had ended so quickly. The Pakistani Army post that had been expected to wake up and attempt to help the terrorists hadn’t fired a single shot. It wasn’t clear why, though it was likely that the post had let its guard down and was unable to focus fire before the encounter ended.

  Back at the Rustom base that evening, the rest of the battalion was waiting for the return of the squads. Celebrations erupted, but had to be kept brief—the surveillance unit, still at the LoC, had radioed in, alerting the men to the possibility of more infiltration attempts. The alert would prove true the following day, but in a stretch of the LoC over 10 km west of the Rustom post’s area of responsibility.

  On a visit to the Kashmir Valley five days later, the Army Chief, Gen. Bipin Rawat, took a chopper out to the Rustom post to meet the men who had foiled the first infiltration since the 2016 surgical strikes. Rawat had played a part in the surgical strikes as Vice Chief at the Army Headquarters in Delhi.

  On 14 August 2017, the government announced that Maj. Preetam Singh Kunwar would be decorated with the Kirti Chakra, the country’s second-highest peacetime gallantry award. He would find out about it only the following day.

  A few days earlier, in August, a soldier from the unit, Kuldeep Singh Rawat, had been killed by a Pakistani Army sniper not far from where the 26 May infiltration attempt had taken place. The entire unit had been drawn into the imperative for revenge, an impulse which, at the tactical level, doesn’t normally escalate into a larger confrontation.

  ‘We were focused on avenging our boy,’ says Maj. Preetam. ‘On the night of 14 August, I was out on a patrol in the same area. On 15 August, I began getting congratulatory calls for the Kirti Chakra. It was a good day. On the same day, we sniped three Pakistani Army men. That was a very special Independence Day. It was a doubly joyous day, more so because we were able to take revenge.’

  ‘My boys were so aggressive that they did not allow the Pakistanis to retrieve the bodies,’ says Col. Samarjit, describing an anger it is hard to imagine outside the confines of the bonds that functioning in a single Army unit can engender. ‘If they tried to retrieve the bodies, my boys would fire at them. They gave up after trying several times. Finally, it happened only after their Director General Military Operations called his Indian counterpart.’

  The Kirti Chakra citation would record that Maj. Preetam had shown ‘great courage and valour’ in the ‘highest traditions of the Indian Army’. Like most heroes, the officer plays it all down.

  ‘I don’t think I did anything extraordinary,’ he says. ‘I signed up for this job and did what I am expected to do.’

  Col. Samarjit, who was decorated with a Sena Medal for the operation, feels differently.

  ‘That night, Preetam came very close to being awarded an Ashok Chakra, posthumously,’ he says. ‘That was the kind of risk he took to make sure we were able to kill all the intruders. The terrorists were barely metres away from him. No man in that operation would have been surprised if we had lost Preetam that night. His courage was extraordinary.’

  Maj. Preetam’s buddy, Lance Naik Sukhpal Singh, and Col. Samarjit’s buddy, Havildar Brijendra Lal, received Sena Medals for gallantry in the operation.

  Back home in Dehradun, Maj. Preetam’s father, Narender Singh, a retired soldier from the Garhwal Scouts, couldn’t have been happier about his son’s mission. On the evening of 27 May, when Maj. Preetam called his wife, Megha—after being off the grid for three days—to tell her about the operation, she had been overcome with relief and had broken down. Her father had come running, his heart in his mouth. Taking the phone from his weeping daughter’s hand, he exhaled when he heard the voice at the other end.

  ‘The day the operation took place, I was very restless,’ says Megha. ‘I couldn’t sleep the whole night. I guess it was intuition that not all was well with Preetam. Maybe he was caught in a difficult situation. When he finally called and told me he was okay, I just couldn’t hold on, and I began to cry. My father then hugged me and said, “You should be proud of what your husband has done for the country.”’

  Megha Kunwar says that ever since her husband has been deployed in Kashmir, she sits in their home’s puja room and meditates twice a day, morning and evening.

  ‘I had spoken to Megha before the operation—I told her I had been given some extra responsibilities and I would be unreachable for a few days,’ says Maj. Preetam. ‘That’s what I tell her when I am going out to conduct operations. When I came back on 27 May, I saw around forty missed calls from her and a barrage of WhatsApp messages on my mobile. You can tell your family that everything is going to be alright, but you can never really convince them. As we lie exhausted in our bunks, getting the deepest sleep so we can perform well the next day, our loved ones are sitting far away, having sleepless nights. That thought never leaves our minds in forward areas.’

  ‘Every time he doesn’t take my call, I am on the verge of a breakdown,’ says Megha. ‘One day, one of his unit officers told me, “Ma’am, don’t worry if he doesn’t call you, but pray karo ki aapko unit se koi aur kabhi call na kare .” That day, when he called me after the operation, he had dialled from a different number. I was praying that I hear his voice at the other end. I remember praying fervently till I heard his voice.’

  ‘Of course, I feel pride every single day, but let nobody fool you about our fears,’ says Megha. ‘The fear I feel as the partner of an Army officer in Kashmir is a constant, daily, hourly fear. It never goes away. It is a constant companion. It is part of the deal.’

  Their son, Abhiraj, now four years old, has been told about his father’s mission.

  ‘He always asks me, “Papa , aapne chheh bhooton ko kaise maara (How did you kill the six ghosts)?”’ says Maj. Preetam.

  ‘What struck me most about Kunwar was his unshakeab
le cool in a very tense situation,’ says Col. Samarjit. ‘His radio messages from a position just metres away from the terrorists were always conveyed in the calmest manner. There was not a hint of fear or anxiety in his tone. Through the firefight too, he didn’t get even slightly jittery. It takes nerves of steel to hold yourself together like that. If he had not, both he and Sukhpal would have been lost. The terrorists were so close to them, perhaps not even 5 m away. He took an unimaginable risk. It was profoundly brave.’

  At the time of this being written, the 4 Garhwal Rifles has completed its tenure in Kashmir and is being moved to the decidedly more tropical climes of Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where there’s a far lower chance of snow, and where starlight keeps even the darkest nights bright enough to see. Not surprisingly, though, Maj. Preetam isn’t enthusiastic.

  ‘I’ve got to be honest—I’m not really looking forward to it,’ he says. ‘I will miss Kashmir. That’s where I wish to operate. It’s the reason I joined the Army.’

  At a ceremony at the Rashtrapati Bhavan where her husband was decorated with the Kirti Chakra in 2017, Megha sat in the audience sending up a prayer.

  ‘I was thanking God from the bottom of my heart that I was attending this function with my husband,’ she says. ‘There were families who were receiving posthumous awards. I couldn’t imagine being in that position. And yet, how difficult is it to really imagine? The unthinkable plays in our minds, invades our peace every minute of every day, doesn’t it?’

  As they walked out of the Rashtrapati Bhavan that evening and waited for their car to pick them up, Megha held Maj. Preetam’s hand and whispered, ‘Listen, enough. I don’t want you to serve in Kashmir any more. Do you hear me? Enough.’

  Maj. Preetam smiled and held her close.

  14

  ‘You Cannot Sustain Fear of Death’

  Flight Lieutenant Gunadnya Ramesh Kharche

  Airspace over Tamil Nadu

  6 February 2012

  ‘Would you rather die in a big fireball? Or in a mangled mess? Take your pick.’

  K-3060’s co-pilot, Sqn Ldr Aditee Bhangaonkar, found herself smiling at the question. She turned to the flight’s captain, sitting to her left in the cockpit, his words helping break the tension, even if only for a few moments. He chuckled into his headset, which was the only way the people in the cockpit could hear one another over the roar of the twin Soviet-built turbo propeller engines. Except, like his co-pilot, Flt Lt Gunadnya Ramesh Kharche knew that there was nothing even remotely amusing about their situation.

  It was simple, really. The aircraft couldn’t land. Not without ending up in either a deadly fireball or a mangled mess, as its captain had joked. And the realization had taken the crew of the Antonov whole minutes to digest.

  As Gunadnya’s nervous humour hung heavy in the cockpit, he manoeuvred the aircraft for a pass over the air base they had departed from 2 hours earlier. He needed a few moments to process the K-3060’s terrifying situation. As he banked the aircraft sharply to the right, the base popped into view below them. The pilots and navigator saw it instantly—a large crowd had gathered on the apron near the air traffic control (ATC) tower. It looked like every soul at the air base had dropped whatever they had been doing that busy Monday morning in February 2012 and gathered near the runway. Right next to the tarmac, the pilots spotted three crash trucks, their lights flashing and engines running.

  Two hours had changed everything.

  An-32 military transport aircraft

  At 11 that morning, as the K-3060 had taken off from the IAF’s Sulur air base near the ancient city of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, the pilots remembered noting what perfect weather it was for the sort of flying they were about to embark on. The Soviet-era Antonov An-32 transport plane had been its usual reliable self—rugged, rough and reassuringly loud. Apart from co-pilots Flt Lt Gunadnya and Sqn Ldr Aditee, the crew included navigator Sqn Ldr Saumitra Mishra and flight engineer Sergeant Shailendra Singh. As the aircraft roared off the runway, the pilots pulled the 20-tonne airplane into a gentle climb to 1000 feet, levelling out at that altitude. The crew from the 33 Squadron, nicknamed ‘Soaring Storks’, was on a ‘low-level navigation mission’ that day, which meant they would stay at a low altitude and practise a series of manoeuvres to test flying capabilities, navigation skills and, quite simply, to keep the complicated and skill-intensive daily business of operating aircraft in shipshape.

  ‘It was a beautiful day. No clouds, bright sun, cool weather. Perfect for flying,’ recalls Gunadnya about that February morning in 2012.

  Cruising at 1000 feet, the crew had pointed the aircraft south, flying it out over a relatively low-population area, quite a distance away from the Coimbatore metropolitan area, which was to their west and which was Tamil Nadu’s second largest city after its state capital, Chennai. Flight paths for military air missions are usually carefully chosen to avoid built-up and densely populated areas. It was especially so that morning, since the crew of K-3060 was flying low.

  Flying low wasn’t a problem at all. The An-32 has endeared itself to generations of Indian pilots for its forgiving toughness and stability even during risky, low-level flight missions. It is the An-32, after all, that transports the bulk of military personnel and material to forward bases in the north and the north-east, frequently flying through narrow valleys and navigating past lofty ridge lines. Some would say the An-32 is an ungainly sight, with its narrow fuselage and hulking shoulder-like engine pods. But to the men and women who fly them, there are few aircraft more cherished than the An-32.

  The K-3060 may have been over two decades old, but it was still a reliable airframe that had given its current and past crews little cause for worry. It was already in line for an elaborate upgrade. Three years earlier, in June 2009, the Indian government had engaged a Ukrainian firm to give 105 IAF An-32s an additional fifteen years of service. This would be done by overhauling each aircraft from the inside out, fitting them with better engines, modern navigation and survival electronics, advanced new sensors and a superior cockpit. The aircraft would also receive better ergonomic and functional seats for the pilots and crew. The plan was to squeeze a valuable decade and a half out of a rugged fleet of planes by making them more modern, safer and easier to fly. The K-3060 was in queue for the big makeover, but that wouldn’t stop normal, daily missions like the one it was on that morning.

  ‘We had planned to fly for 3 hours. Everything went perfectly smoothly,’ says Flt Lt Gunadnya. ‘Until, of course, it was time to return to base.’

  Their mission complete, Flt Lt Gunadnya ordered his crew to prepare for the return leg of the journey. The aircraft was eased out of its already low altitude to about 800 feet. It was gently descending as the pilots manoeuvred it into a return flight path towards Sulur. Over the radio, co-pilot Aditee notified air traffic control at Sulur that they were returning to base. With a clear flight path back, it was time to lower the K-3060’s wheels. The An-32 has three wheels—two tough main landing wheels that pop out from the engine pods in the wings, and a smaller nose wheel that is mostly used to steer the aircraft on the ground. Gunadnya pushed a rectangular white button on the cockpit panel to trigger the clanking hydraulic sequence that would see the landing gear being lowered in a ballet of moving mechanical parts.

  And that’s when it happened.

  ‘I waited for the three indicator lights on the cockpit panel to tell me that the landing gear has successfully been lowered. Three green lights in a triangle,’ Gunadnya says. ‘The nose wheel had lowered fine. Check. The right landing wheel had landed fine. Check. But the cockpit indicator for the left wheel glowed orange, not green.’

  Gunadnya’s first thought was that it could be an electrical malfunction. It was rare, but not unheard of, for cockpit indicators on old aircraft to return incorrect information owing to something as simple as a short circuit in the wiring. Perhaps the left wheel had indeed lowered successfully, but failed to trigger an electrical signal to the c
ockpit. Gunadnya quickly leaned towards the cockpit’s side windshield, twisting backward while trying to check visually if the plane’s left wheel was down. From where he sat, he couldn’t tell, so he ordered Flight Engineer Shailendra to go to the flight cabin and look through one of the tiny porthole-style windows. Shailendra returned with the confirmation Flt Lt Gunadnya had been dreading. The entire wheel was indeed stuck in the engine pod in the wing, and had failed to descend.

  Sqn Ldr Aditee suggested recycling the undercarriage—raising the wheels and attempting to lower them again, in the hope that all three would descend. It was aviation’s equivalent of that old solution to a stubborn computer problem: reboot. In the event of a hydraulic fault, it was possible that the jammed wheel would come unstuck and descend without further trouble. With the wheels whining back up into place, the crew held its breath as Gunadnya waited 15 seconds before pushing the landing gear button again. The hydraulics whined again as the wheels descended into landing position. When Gunadnya turned around in his seat for a confirmation from the flight engineer, he only saw a ‘thumbs down’ gesture. It hadn’t worked.

  ‘We tried everything to lower the undercarriage. Nothing worked,’ says Sqn Ldr Aditee. ‘And finally we decided to leave the undercarriage in the same position. This was when we all finally came to know that we had to face this situation.’