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

by Shiv Aroor

  Capt. Varun Singh was as physically close to death as a man could possibly get. The first coded transmission from the encounter site in J&K’s Bandipora area had confirmed the Marine Commando officer’s death. But his eyes had fluttered momentarily while a combat medic bandaged his blown-open chest. As he was carried into the waiting helicopter, an officer updated the status: the commando was alive, but he was as good as dead.

  On 12 July 2016, 16 years after that encounter, Capt. Singh still felt the pain—not an ambiguous discomfort that came in waves, but a real, steady, unrelenting pain. It was agony that was overwhelmed, however, by the honour that came his way on that searingly hot day in Visakhapatnam. In the shadow of a 20-feet-high human hand hewn from stone clutching a jagged hunting knife, Capt. Singh was appointed CO of the country’s first dedicated Marine Commandos (MARCOS) unit, INS Karna. Every man and woman at the ceremony that morning knew that Capt. Singh’s salute didn’t just carry with it a sense of achievement. It exuded the energy of a miracle, and a sense of disbelief that Capt. Singh would feel every moment of his life after that incident 16 years earlier.

  It was snowing heavily across the Kashmir valley in December 1999, 5 months after the Kargil conflict, when Capt. Singh, then a Lieutenant, landed in Srinagar. The young MARCO had just been deployed to the Wular Lake, a vast wetland reservoir on the Jhelum, about an hour by road, west of the state capital.

  As beautiful and placid as the lake was, flanked by gentle hills, it was a veritable highway for terrorists that had infiltrated from PoK. Using the lake, terrorists easily cut 40 km from their journey to Srinagar. Devoid of the nuisance of Army and police checkpoints along the roads, the lake proved a perfect conduit for them. It was for this reason that in 1996, the Indian government decided to deploy a squad of the Indian Navy’s MARCOS to secure the lake and patrol its environs. The Valley got a fresh set of highly qualified guardians. The MARCOS, in turn, got access to what was then their first and only live operational battleground in the country.

  Capt. Singh remembers thinking it was a perfect opportunity for operational exposure.

  ‘The MARCOS spent hard hours training, but we simply didn’t have a place to demonstrate our skills in the real world. This was it,’ he says.

  Like the squad they were replacing, Capt. Singh and the other MARCOS would be based in a pump house overlooking the massive lake that provided water to surrounding villages. The position provided a commanding vista from Bandipora to Sopore, including the famed Baba Shakur-ud-Din mosque, and prayers wafting through the crisp, clear air would become an accompaniment to the daily commando patrols on and around the lake.

  On that day in December when he arrived, Capt. Singh stood staring out over the Wular Lake, its frozen surface glistening in the dying light. A memory that would visit him often inevitably came flooding back. His father, a retired naval sailor, had named him after the Hindu god of the sea because the infant’s janamkundli (astrological birth chart) said he would die in water. A star at the Navy’s diving school, he was trained to operate at depths of up to 180 feet. As he stared out over the lake, he told himself, and not for the first time, that if the lake claimed his life, it would all make perfect sense.

  Capt. Singh hadn’t always been drawn to the water. His teenage dream was much more specific. He simply wanted to kill terrorists. Growing up certain that he would join the military, he entered the hallowed campus of the NDA in 1989, fully prepared to become an Army officer. It was his father’s coaxing that persuaded the young cadet to switch to the Navy.

  ‘Like a good son, and to honour my father, I joined the Navy. It was an enormous thing for him. As a sailor in the Navy, to see his own son become an officer couldn’t be described in words,’ Capt. Singh remembers.

  Honouring his father was one thing. But Capt. Singh knew that his dream of combating terrorists had receded considerably. The Navy would take him out to sea and far from the dangers he truly wanted to fight. As he had expected, soon after he was commissioned into naval service, Capt. Singh was posted as a navigating officer on a warship.

  The years rolled on. Capt. Singh got married, and in 1997 his first child, Shivani, was born. As he held her in the hospital, he had the thought all fathers do—that he had never seen anything as beautiful. Watching his wife and newborn girl sleep that night, the sense of well-being and joy that pervaded his mind was also a reminder—that his long-cherished dream of going into combat was no longer a decision he could take easily. It was his wife, Reena, aware of what was bothering her husband, who pushed him to try.

  Soon after, Capt. Singh enlisted as a trainee combat diver—his first voluntary brush with the element that he had been told would one day kill him.

  ‘Everyone told me, “Why now? You’ve got a family, Varun. Life at MARCOS is disturbing and dangerous. You know you will get in harm’s way.” They were right,’ Capt. Singh says. ‘In which other profession do you knowingly get into harm’s way?’

  And there was no shortage of harm hidden in the expansive view Capt. Singh got that evening in December 1999 as he gazed out over the lake. In only 5 months, the young commando would experience first-hand the most dangerous kind of harm the restive valley could offer.

  The MARCOS at Wular Lake operated under the Army’s 15 Rashtriya Rifles, its headquarters in Watlab on the lake’s banks. The unit’s CO, Col. S.K. Jha from the Gorkha Rifles, loved the MARCOS under his charge, and used his discretion to constantly send the young naval commandos on patrolling duties beyond their designated areas of responsibility just to give them exposure and experience.

  ‘He had a great deal of faith in us. And we promised him our undying support no matter what the requirement.’

  In the winter months at the dawn of the new millennium, there was little the men around Wular needed to face beyond the rigours of daily patrols in hostile weather. By April, the heavy snow would melt and make way once again for infiltration across the LoC to the west. By the end of April, the harsh realities of Kashmir would have flooded back full force. Which is why, when Capt. Singh and 7 of his MARCOS mates were summoned at 0200 hours on 2 May to investigate an intelligence tip-off about possible terrorist bunkers on a mountainside, they sprung up ever-ready.

  The 8 MARCOS joined about 100 Army men to search for hideouts across 3 mountains. In single-line formation, the men trekked up to each peak, then rolled downhill, checking each crevasse for possible weapon caches or hidden stores, or perhaps even terrorists.

  The men found nothing that night. By lunchtime, they had assembled at a secure location in the foothills when they were alerted by radio static. A crackling voice announced that an encounter was on in Bandipora, not far from Wular Lake, in a village called Puttushahi. Three Al-Badr terrorists were reported to be hiding there inside a two-storey house.

  Capt. Singh stopped eating and walked over to the Army team leader, asking him if he and the MARCOS could dash to the encounter site. This was the first terror encounter since the snow had melted. Capt. Singh remembers feeling every fibre of his most enduring dream explode at once. Here was a chance to fight actual terrorists. There was another reason he wanted to get to the site without any further delay. The voice on the radio belonged to an Army officer who happened to be Capt. Singh’s course mate at the Academy. And he was leading the antiterror hunt.

  In minutes, Capt. Singh and his buddy, Lead Mechanical Engineer Vijay Singh Rawat, were cleared to proceed to the location by road. The 2 men arrived at the encounter site in 45 minutes. Right outside the village, they noticed that the 15 Rashtriya Rifles CO and their boss, Col. Jha was standing near his vehicle. The actual encounter was taking place a short distance inside the village. The Colonel had decided to stand back so there was no pressure on the team leading the hunt. As soon as he saw the 2 MARCOS emerge from their vehicle, he ordered them to proceed to the spot inside the village.

  ‘He knew we had knowledge of explosives and demolition stores. He had faith in us. We ran into the village without a second thought,
’ Capt. Singh remembers. The 2 commandos received a quick briefing on the situation from the officer heading the operation as they took positions.

  Surrounded by a 6-feet boundary wall, the house in which the terrorists were hiding was about 18 feet high, with an attic. The compound, which also had a small cowshed in the rear, was surrounded on all sides by 2-storey houses just feet apart, each one cleared of all residents for their safety. The closest house was to the right. Capt. Singh and Vijay sprinted into the house and up the stairs to a second-floor balcony that afforded a direct vantage point overlooking the house the terrorists were hiding in.

  In radio contact with the Army team leader outside the compound, Capt. Singh relayed that he was providing fire cover as his buddy tossed a pair of grenades into the house on 2 separate floors. The ensuing chaos, he thought, would allow him and Vijay to spot the terrorists and take them out with precision shots. The grenades were tossed, exploding loudly in the main house. But nothing moved. The men heard nothing but the sizzle of air after explosion.

  Vijay had just used both his grenades. Just as Capt. Singh was handing over 1 of his own 2 grenades (MARCOS carry 2 grenades in their vest pouch), the Army team leader radioed in asking for help with an RDX explosive he wanted to plant in the house as the next course of action. Capt. Singh placed the grenade back in his pouch and went down to the staging area to inspect the bomb that had just been built. A resident of the area was enlisted to walk into the compound and plant the bomb quietly on the ground floor of the house.

  ‘The assault vest I was wearing was given to me by my brother-in-law, an Army officer posted in Srinagar. He had been presented the assault vest by a foreign Army when he was deployed there,’ Capt. Singh notes. The vest was made of cotton, not the polyester assault vests that were standard issue to the MARCOS at the time. That difference in material would play a shattering role in the minutes that followed.

  The RDX explosive was placed and detonated, causing a clean implosion of the house the terrorists were hiding in. Not a single brick blew outward. The entire structure collapsed on itself in a cloud of dust. Shock waves from the blast shattered every windowpane in a 20-metre radius. Capt. Singh and Vijay emerged from behind a mattress they had propped up for protection. Stepping back out into the balcony, they tried to peer through the dust. When it had settled, they noticed the body of 1 terrorist hanging from the first floor. The other 2 weren’t visible. Capt. Singh looked at his watch. It was 1700 hours. The sun would set soon and that would give the other terrorists a chance to escape, if not attempt an attack. The operation needed to be completed before sundown at all costs.

  The MARCOS could not spray bullets into the dust even if they wanted to.

  ‘We’re trained for ek goli, ek dushman (one bullet, one enemy). We conserve ammunition and use as little of it as necessary to do the job. We couldn’t fire at something we couldn’t see,’ Capt. Singh remembers.

  Leaving Vijay on the second floor, Capt. Singh went downstairs and jumped over the wall and into the main compound of the detonated house. Three Army soldiers came in from the front. Capt. Singh stepped over the smouldering debris, reaching up to check the pulse of the terrorist who hung down from the first floor. He was dead. Capt. Singh removed the AK-47 the terrorist had with him and confirmed over the radio that the first terrorist was confirmed dead.

  But in the next few seconds, there would be a momentary, but fatal loss of judgement, a split-second collapse of command and control, and of the unwavering focus required during such operations.

  ‘Since this was our first kill after the snows had melted, there was a sudden outburst of excitement by the jawans. It was a matter of great pride. There was some chaos. About 14 soldiers suddenly scaled the wall into the compound to see the dead terrorist. This was a big mistake,’ Capt. Singh remembers. ‘We didn’t know where the other 2 terrorists were. In those few seconds of excitement, this was overlooked.’

  Amidst the impromptu outburst of cheer, 1 soldier from the group ventured towards the cowshed in the backyard. Standard operating procedure would have dictated that the men destroy the cowshed with a rocket or bomb, since there was no way to safely inspect its interior. In a fatal lapse of training, Army jawan Reddy opened the cowshed door and peered within.

  The clatter of Kalashnikov fire rang out as the 2 terrorists hiding inside the cowshed cut down the jawan in a hail of bullets. Hearing the fire, most of the jawans in the compound ran for the boundary wall, hoping to scale it and take up safe positions to return fire.

  The 2 terrorists crept slowly out of the cowshed, their weapons at the ready. It was the first time that Capt. Singh had seen a live terrorist in an operation. In that moment, ironically, he now recalls, his dream of killing terrorists could not have been further from his mind. This was no dream. This was an operation, and he had little over a second to act. As he was raising his weapon to take aim, he noticed that 2 Army jawans had frozen in their tracks, unable to move, stunned by what had just happened. Wasting no time, Capt. Singh leapt towards them, forcing them to the ground, landing on his knees, his AK-47 pointed directly at the 2 terrorists.

  ‘The 2 terrorists were slowly stepping past me about 5 metres in front. But they hadn’t noticed me,’ Capt. Singh recalls. His weapon in single-fire mode to conserve ammunition, the commando opened fire. The next few seconds are a sequence Capt. Singh remembers in devastating slow motion.

  ‘As they were stepping past me, their right profile was facing me. I fired 7 rounds at them. That’s all I remember. When one of the terrorists fell, his finger was on his rifle’s trigger and his right hand was stretched out towards me,’ Capt. Singh recalls. ‘As he fell, his finger squeezed the trigger, spraying bullets all over. One of those bullets came straight at me and smashed into the grenade I had placed in my pouch a short while ago.’

  If the grenade had exploded, there would have been nothing left of Capt. Singh and the soldiers around him. But that 7.62-mm bullet penetrated the upper part of the grenade, splintering it but not detonating it.

  ‘The bullet had hit the shoulder of the grenade, the top part of the device that houses the closing cap and striker. The pin was out. Had I been wearing my usual polyester assault vest, which was more spacious, the lever would have been activated and the grenade would have detonated, tearing me to pieces. The cotton vest I was wearing was so tightly packed that despite the grenade lever breaking free, it was seized by the vest.’

  If a grenade detonation would have indisputably killed the young commando, the splintering grievously injured him. Just as it registered that he had fulfilled his boyhood dream of killing terrorists in live combat, Capt. Singh felt himself slip into darkness. Consciousness came in short, blood-tinged flourishes.

  As he lay there, his body broken, the Army team leader ordered Vijay, who was still in the balcony of the neighbouring house, to destroy the cowshed with a rocket. Respectfully, the marine commando protested.

  ‘Mere saab andar hain, mujhe unko leke aana hai (Sir is still in there. I need to get him out),’ he said over the radio. The Army team leader was furious by this time, ordering the commando to blast the cowshed and get out of there as quickly as possible. But Vijay stood his ground. Exasperated, the Army officer gave the commando 5 minutes to retrieve what both believed was Capt. Singh’s body.

  Vijay scaled the wall, stepping slowly towards the fallen figure of his MARCOS partner. First, he fired shots at the terrorists’ bodies to make sure they were dead. Then he reached down towards the officer’s bloodied torso and took hold of the splintered grenade. Holding it with both hands and pressing the lever, he removed the detonator and disarmed the device. Then he checked Capt. Singh’s wrist, feeling the faintest pulse. He shouted to the men positioned outside to begin the emergency evacuation.

  Bandaged and strapped into an Army vehicle, Capt. Singh was dashed to the Army’s 15 Rashtriya Rifles headquarters 12 km away. Those with him, including Vijay, knew it would only be minutes before the officer bled out and
died. They had seen men die from far slighter injuries in combat. This commando’s chest had been burst open, the cavity within visible, every organ impaled by unforgiving little shards of metal. There was literally no hope as the jeep carrying Capt. Singh accelerated down the highway towards Watlab.

  An Army Cheetah helicopter at Sharifabad was alerted for a possible emergency airlift from Watlab to Srinagar, and the pilots had been briefed about who they would be carrying and the condition he was in. But they were finally told to stand down because the chopper could not take off in the dying light. With a 5-minute twilight window, the 2 pilots, who had met Capt. Singh at a unit party just 2 days before, decided to make a break for it. Cleared for the mission, they sprinted to their helicopter and were airborne in minutes, dashing straight to Watlab.

  ‘I only recall what happened in flashes. I remember being shoved into the helicopter. Then, it was landing at 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar where they had a helipad. The third was being pushed into the X-Ray machine there,’ Capt. Singh recalls.

  The Army doctor in charge at the Srinagar base hospital, Lt. Col. Ravi Kale, took less than a minute to decide that it wasn’t worth trying to save Capt. Singh—he was too far gone to be retrieved. To this day, Kale says he has no idea what stopped him from walking out of that ward. Something compelled him to stay and try to save the dying commando in the gurney in front of him.

  ‘There was a Christmas tree of shrapnel inside my chest. Splinters were scattered everywhere. I was pushed into the operating theatre at 2030 hours. I was finally stitched up the next day. I didn’t regain consciousness until the evening of 4 May,’ Capt. Singh recalls.

  Still extremely critical, the commando couldn’t speak. He remained on forced ventilation since an entire lobe of his left lung needed to be amputated. By 5 May, he was fully conscious and able to speak very slowly.