India’s Most Fearless

by Aroor, Shiv

  Not a single soldier of Echo Company ate a morsel that night. And none slept. Havildar Dada’s death had soured the taste of victory.

  ‘We didn’t celebrate the killing of 4 terrorists. We mourned the loss of a remarkably brave soldier, a brother. For 3 days, no one in the company spoke about the operation,’ reminisces Maj. Raj, who was awarded a Sena Medal for gallantry.

  Roukhin and Senwang miss the times they spent playing video games with their father when he visited them. The battalion misses Havildar Hangpan Dada also for the sermons he delivered as a pastor at the unit church, sermons that were attended by all the men.

  Havildar Dada had visited home for the last time in early 2016. Chasen remembers he had bought her a new saree and a blazer, both items she considered expensive, but admired. She remembers Hangpan telling her that the colour of the clothes—the blue saree and the white blazer—looked perfect on her.

  ‘I think he liked the dress more than I did. Maybe it was his favourite dress on me,’ smiles Chasen, 33, who never needed to ask Hangpan what he wanted to eat when he came home—it was Chasen’s signature pork and daal-bhaat, each and every time.

  Not surprisingly, she remembers every word of her last conversation with Hangpan, the night before the operation on 25 May. Nothing meant more to her than those rare calls from that mountain in north Kashmir.

  ‘He asked me if the children and I had had dinner. He told me about his post. He said he would take us to Kolkata for Christmas. I wish we had spoken longer,’ she says. ‘Kahaani adhoori reh gayi (The story was left unfinished).’

  Havildar Dada and Chasen were married for 10 years. She remembers them as being friends as much as they were husband and wife. But he never spoke about the dangers soldiers faced in the field. Later she would learn that Havildar Dada always asked his brother, Laphang Dada, to offer prayers for the safety of his men.

  Chasen also remembers reeling in horror when she learnt that Havildar Dada was an avid snake-keeper, a habit he had nurtured through tenures in the jungles of the North-east.

  ‘Who keeps snakes as pets? I don’t know of anyone! Had I known about it, I would have scolded him and asked him to mend his ways,’ Chasen says.

  More recognition would come for Havildar Hangpan Dada with the main office block at the Shillong-based Assam Regimental Centre being named after him. Chasen was invited to unveil the plaque in her husband’s memory. The Arunachal Pradesh government decided to additionally immortalize the soldier by renaming the annual chief minister’s football and volleyball championships after Havildar Dada. He is likely to also be commemorated closer to where he became a legend.

  ‘There are plans to name an 8-km operational track from Jatti to Tiranga Post in the Shamshabari after Dada. We will never stop speaking about Dada’s courage and how he fought that day. We will every day,’ says Maj. Raj.

  At the 2017 Republic Day parade on Delhi’s Rajpath, Chasen received Havildar Dada’s Ashok Chakra from President Pranab Mukherjee. Her head bowed in Namaste, she gracefully accepted the honour. Visibly steeling herself, it was one of Chasen’s most difficult moments.

  ‘Dil mein toh ro rahi thi, par sabko apne aansoo kaise dikhaati? Aakhir mai Dada ki wife hoon, aur Dada ki wajah se wahan hoon jahan hoon. (I was crying in my heart but how could I show my tears to everyone? After all, I am Dada’s wife and I am where I am because of him),’ she says.

  She wore the blue saree and the white blazer that day.

  5

  ‘Two Bullets Can’t Kill a Commando’

  Captain Jaidev Dangi

  Tral, Jammu and Kashmir

  19 June 2014

  The commando smiled.

  It was Ritu.

  Her name blinked on his battered iPhone screen.

  The two had exchanged rings 4 months before, on Valentine’s Day in 2014, as she had wanted. In 2 more months, he knew what would happen—he would be hoisted on to the shoulders of his comrades in his Para-SF unit and packed off to rural Haryana to be married.

  Ritu sat in her hostel room in Rohtak, waiting for the commando to pick up the phone. She would not disconnect until the phone had rung through. If he didn’t pick up, she knew he would call back.

  From his team’s operating base in the terrorist haven of Tral in south Kashmir, Capt. Jaidev Dangi, 25 years old, always called back.

  He swiped to accept the call. Capt. Dangi and Ritu had not known each other before they had been brought together by their families earlier that year. It had been awkward in person, and since Capt. Dangi had no choice but to rush back to Kashmir after the engagement ceremony, they had only come to know each other over text messages and the daily phone call, which was sometimes as brief as a few seconds.

  Capt. Dangi sounded relaxed that June evening, not something that Ritu got to hear often. She had found him calm enough not to ask about his work. Instead, she kept the conversation light, telling him what she had decided to wear for the wedding and the additions she was hoping to make to the guest list.

  Capt. Dangi, who usually acknowledged every word she said with a sound, suddenly seemed distracted. Ritu found herself talking into a void. Something was amiss. The commando always gave her his full attention when he spoke to her. All too soon, he cut in abruptly.

  ‘Ritu. Listen. I can’t talk. I will speak to you later. Don’t call back.’

  He hung up. Ritu held the phone to her ear for a few seconds after it was disconnected. Was this what it was always going to be like? She waited for a few moments, staring out of her hostel window. Then she tapped out a text message and sent it: Call me when you’re free. Please take care.

  The silence was new, but Ritu had been faced with Capt. Dangi’s hushed, distracted tone earlier. A month before, on 5 May, as the country braced itself for the big verdict of the national elections, her fiancé had fronted an operation that led to the killing of a Pakistani terrorist in a village near Tral. On that day too, he had cut their conversation short. Ritu knew that the man she was to marry was a soldier whose business was to hunt and kill terrorists. But that first time had made her blood run cold. It was something she would never quite get used to. Nor would Capt. Dangi’s family.

  The commando jogged to the operations briefing room that evening on 19 June 2014. Capt. Dangi and his team of Para-SF warriors had returned to their base earlier that day from a different operation. And just as Capt. Dangi had begun to tentatively unwind over the phone with Ritu, a fresh intelligence input had alerted the team to the presence of a terrorist inside a house in Buchoo village, less than 10 km away.

  As the team spilt out of their field headquarters, the distinct scent of eucalyptus floated through the mild summer breeze. Young Kashmiri boys were enjoying a game of cricket at the playground a stone’s throw away. The comforting sound of a ball against bats hewn from the willow trees abundant in the area resounded in the air.

  The men did their final weapons check as an electric crackle passed through the team. Familiar to all soldiers, it is the frisson right before a hunt.

  Capt. Dangi stroked his full beard. Normally clean-shaven and boyish, the lush growth on his face made the young commando look much older than his 25 years. Either way, it was crucial to his work. A beard helped conceal his identity as an outsider. There was now another incentive to keep it, though. Clean-shaven at his engagement, the commando had let his beard grow since, sending Ritu a stream of daily selfies that documented the steady shrouding of his sharp jawline with thick hair. Ritu reacted instantly. She forbade him to shave.

  The hunt Capt. Dangi’s team had set off on that June evening was a special one. The commandos had been waiting for that particular intelligence input for months. Their body language was brimming with quiet excitement.

  The man whose whereabouts had been discovered was no ordinary terrorist carrying an AK-47 and a few magazines. He had been prowling south Kashmir for several years and was far more wily and dangerous than the men Capt. Dangi’s team usually hunted down. It was Adil Ahmed Mir, a Hizb
ul Mujahideen area commander who the commandos had pursued unsuccessfully for several months. Adil had been mentor and trainer to Burhan Wani, then an upcoming social-media-savvy Hizbul commander, whose killing 2 years later in 2016 would plunge the Kashmir valley into a fresh cycle of bloodshed and turmoil.

  Adil could not be allowed to slip through the net this time as he had several times in the past, to the intense frustration of the many teams that had been dispatched to capture him, dead or alive.

  A Casspir mine-protected vehicle carrying the commandos rumbled off from Hardumir towards the location where Adil Mir was supposed to be hiding. The Hardumir company operating base offered a sweeping view of the area, including Buchoo village in the distance and the thick forest around it. Capt. Dangi quickly organized his thoughts. There was first a sense of disbelief that Mir had allowed himself to be spotted. Over 6 months, the terrorist had honed his skills of shaking his pursuers off into an art form. Capt. Dangi set everything else aside and focused his thoughts on the one thing he was certain of: Adil’s killing or capture would deal a crushing blow to the Hizbul Mujahideen.

  ‘We were 99 per cent sure it was Adil Mir and 100 per cent sure we would get him,’ recalls Capt. Dangi. ‘My team was looking forward to the action as this is what we were trained for. It was our chance to get the slippery fellow. You know, he never used a cell phone. He was so guarded.’

  It was the height of summer and the sun would not disappear below the horizon for at least another 90 minutes, as the commandos sped towards the map location they’d been given.

  As the Casspir rumbled swiftly past apple orchards, towering chinar trees and lush paddy fields, Capt. Dangi and his men conducted a quick tactical briefing. They made it to the spot in less than 10 minutes.

  Capt. Dangi recalls the conversation he had with his men inside the vehicle.

  ‘Andhera hone se pehle operation khatam karna hai (We have to finish the operation before darkness sets in).’

  He did not need to tell them twice. The men knew that this was likely to be their one final chance to get Adil Ahmed Mir before he truly disappeared before the winter months.

  It was 1700 hours when Capt. Dangi’s 8-man squad reached Buchoo village with a team each of 3 Rashtriya Rifles and the J&K Police special operations group in tow. The intelligence input they had received was specific: it pointed to the presence of only 1 terrorist, Adil Ahmed Mir himself, in the village. This would soon prove to be a dangerous miscalculation.

  Stepping quietly out of their Casspir vehicle in daylight, a short distance outside the village, the team was faced with a fresh quandary. The intelligence input had failed to factor in a crucial point. The man in whose home Adil was supposedly present owned 3 adjoining houses in the same compound. If Adil was actually there, he could be in any of the 3 houses.

  In a matter of seconds, finding Adil Ahmed Mir had become thrice as difficult.

  The men were rapidly assigned their roles before they headed towards the compound with the 3 houses. The Rashtriya Rifles soldiers would lay a cordon in front of the compound. Capt. Dangi and his commando squad would position themselves behind the wall at the rear end of the complex.

  The young officer’s instincts had told him that this was the escape route Adil was likeliest to take. Capt. Dangi and his 19-year-old buddy, Paratrooper Mukesh Kumar, took cover behind a eucalyptus tree with their Tavor TAR-21 assault rifles. They had chosen the spot for its unobstructed view of the compound’s backyard. The 2 men did another weapons check as the sun sank a little lower on the horizon.

  Almost 800 km away, Ritu was sitting in her hostel room, a silent prayer on her lips.

  The eucalyptus scent wasn’t just a familiar friend in the Kashmir valley. Capt. Dangi had grown up in Haryana’s Madina village, where towering eucalyptuses lined the edges of fields owned by his father, who had died when Capt. Dangi was still in school.

  For a boy who did not know much about the Army when he was a teenager, and who was coaxed by his physics teacher to sign up, Capt. Dangi’s journey to Kashmir as a commando is an intriguing one. It was his instructor at the IMA, Maj. Kunal Rathi, who made him take the big step into the Paras. ‘If you want to do what you are being trained for, then come to Special Forces,’ the cadet had been told.

  He had never regretted the decision.

  Capt. Dangi and Mukesh strapped on their ballistic combat helmets. The remaining men had also formed pairs with their buddies and taken positions behind Capt. Dangi and Mukesh. This was to provide the lead pair cover, while sealing off alternative routes that could allow the terrorist to reach the stream and swim to the forest beyond. If he reached the forest, this mission was as good as dead.

  The police team cautiously approached the entrance to the main house, ready to open fire if required. Seconds after they knocked on the door, Capt. Dangi spotted a well-built, bearded man in a pheran make a wild dash out the back door.

  Not only was this a suspicious move, it was plainly hostile and confirmed the intelligence input. Yet, standard protocol had to be followed. The commandos had to be absolutely sure that the man who had rushed out of the house was not a civilian. In an icy calm voice trained not to alarm, Capt. Dangi called out to the man, asking him to reveal his identity, remove his pheran and drop his weapon to the ground if he was carrying one.

  ‘You can surrender if you want to. There’s still time,’ Capt. Dangi warned.

  This routine drill during the conduct of counter-terrorism operations exposes soldiers to enormous additional risks. But nothing is more important to the Army than eliminating the possibility of collateral damage. Never mind if it increases the chance of its own casualties, as it very often does.

  The man did not respond to Capt. Dangi’s call.

  Instead, he jumped across the compound’s back wall with the support of his left hand while the other grasped a now visible AK-47 assault rifle. As he landed on the ground 15 metres away from Capt. Dangi and Mukesh, the terrorist opened fire.

  Dodging that first hail of bullets, the commando leaned towards Mukesh, ‘Iska khel khatam (His game is over).’ The 2 men exchanged quick nods.

  It is near impossible to describe the trust buddy pairs place in each other during operations. Placing their lives in each other’s hands forms the basis of the relationship. When a firefight breaks out, buddy pairs are not just working towards eliminating an adversary; they also draw strength from and protect each other. It is a force multiplier system that creates the most basic human linkage at a tactical, instinctive and emotional level.

  Right in front of them, the terrorist fired for 8 more seconds until he drained his first AK-47 magazine. Before he could reload his rifle, Capt. Dangi and Mukesh began their counter-fire, sending 6 single shots each from their TAR-21s whizzing through the air and straight into the terrorist’s body, shredding him where he stood. The precision shots ensured swift death.

  If the intelligence input was accurate, the mission had just been successfully completed—it lay in a bloody heap in front of the 2 lead commandos. And yet, somewhere in Capt. Dangi’s reptilian brain, he knew it couldn’t have been this easy. The men would know only moments later how the intelligence input had really only scratched the surface.

  ‘We relaxed a bit for a few seconds thinking we had got our guy. But hell, we were wrong. Everything had only just begun,’ remembers Capt. Dangi.

  Less than a minute after the first man was shot dead, 2 more terrorists sprang from the house they were hiding in and immediately opened fire at Capt. Dangi’s position. Firing their weapons on full automatic, the terrorists took the warriors by surprise. Not only had the intelligence input specified the presence of a single terrorist, the 2 men who had just emerged were not making any attempt to escape like the first one—they were in all-out attack mode.

  It quickly dawned on the squad that the terrorists seemed to be following a well-thought-out plan. The first one stormed out of the house and made contact with the commandos. The ensuing firefight revea
led the position Capt. Dangi and Mukesh were holding. The next 2 terrorists emerged by surprise to finish the commandos off.

  At this point, Capt. Dangi and his squad did not know that 1 of the 2 men firing at them was Adil Ahmed Mir.

  The man they had just shot dead was only a foot soldier—either Abdul Ahad Shah or Tariq Ahmad Parray of the Hizbul Mujahideen. But the 2 men now firing aggressively at them were doing so with a worrying level of skill.

  ‘The two were firing very accurately. They were extremely well-trained. The sheer intensity of the fire forced us to take cover with our heads down. We had to do something quickly,’ recalls Capt. Dangi. He remembers feeling a spasm of anger at the abrupt turn of events that had put the commandos on the defensive. He felt a familiar dryness of the mouth as he wondered if the 2 terrorists would use their hail of fire from just 20 metres away to make a getaway. What he had not accounted for was actually taking a bullet while this happened.

  The 2 terrorists had realized that they would need to get rid of Capt. Dangi and Mukesh, the lead pair, if they were to disappear into the tall grass and crawl down to the stream without being pursued. They were surrounded and that was the only exit route. By now, they were desperate to break out of the cordon laid by the commandos to prevent their escape.

  The trunk of the tree behind which Capt. Dangi and Mukesh had taken cover was not wide enough to shield them both. Sensing an opportunity to pin the commandos down, if not hit them directly, the terrorists began moving towards them, their rifles blazing non-stop.

  Capt. Dangi felt a sudden stab of pain in his left thigh as a Kalashnikov bullet ripped through it. Immediately after, a second bullet pierced his abdomen on the side. Under the hail of ammunition, Capt. Dangi inspected his injuries for a moment, but quickly looked to his buddy. To his horror, Mukesh had sustained nearly identical injuries to the right side of his body.

  ‘It was only when I saw blood gushing from my wounds that I realized I had been shot. I was more worried about Mukesh as his injuries seemed to be worse. The tree trunk had covered our vital organs but some parts of our bodies were exposed,’ recalls Capt. Dangi.