India’s Most Fearless

by Aroor, Shiv

  He quickly checked Mukesh’s helmet. Fortunately, it was intact. No headshots.

  ‘Kuch nahi hua hai. Thodi si lagi hai (Nothing has happened. It’s a minor wound) You are alive. Stay that way,’ he told Mukesh.

  It had been barely a year since Mukesh had enlisted in the Army, and Capt. Dangi knew his first gunshot wounds would shake him up more than a little. His battle fatigues soaked in blood, the pallor on Mukesh’s face showed that he thought the end was near. Over the deafening crackle of fire drawing towards them, Capt. Dangi whispered to his buddy. Pointing to his own wounds, Capt. Dangi told him 2 bullets were not enough to kill a commando. Mukesh smiled weakly, with a thumbs-up gesture. He was losing blood rapidly.

  Capt. Dangi quickly dragged Mukesh to a position behind the tree that made him less vulnerable to the incoming fire. He then signalled to one of the other soldiers holding ground behind them to crawl to their position to watch over the injured Mukesh.

  As the commandos provided him covering fire, Naib Subedar Tribhuwan Singh crawled on his hands and knees to reach the wounded man. Tribhuwan knew what had to be done. Reaching Mukesh, he quickly put pressure on the man’s wounds with both hands to prevent further blood loss, telling him that the operation would be over soon and help was on its way. Mukesh’s face was deathly pale by now, his breathing more rapid.

  Blood oozing from his own gunshot wounds, Capt. Dangi stuck his TAR-21 out from behind the tree and opened fire at the advancing terrorists. In the tense crossfire, the officer’s bullets hit one of the terrorists, sending him crashing to the ground.

  It was Adil Ahmed Mir. But he wasn’t dead yet.

  Just as Capt. Dangi was about to open a final burst at the fallen terrorist to finish him off, a bullet came whizzing through the air and hit his assault rifle, jamming it and rendering it useless.

  A more devastating situation could not have transpired. Capt. Dangi was now holding nothing but a piece of metal composite in his hands in the middle of a firefight at 10 metres. And he didn’t have a moment to lose to think of alternatives.

  He swiftly bent over to pick up Mukesh’s weapon. Just then, the last standing terrorist decided to make a break for it, dashing full speed towards the tall grass about 30 metres away that led down to the stream behind Buchoo village. As he reached the grass, he dropped to his hands and knees and began crawling through it, trying to disappear in the undergrowth. Capt. Dangi checked the magazine of his new weapon only to find that Mukesh had emptied it in the firefight. Quickly slamming a new magazine in, Capt. Dangi stepped out of his position to finish off Adil Ahmed Mir, who he had hit a moment ago.

  Mir, lying a few metres away, had enough strength to swing his weapon forward and open a fresh burst of fire directly at the now fully exposed Capt. Dangi. A bullet grazed Capt. Dangi’s cheek. An inch to the right, and it would have been a direct headshot that would have instantly killed the young officer. Thankfully the bullet had only opened Capt. Dangi’s skin, a mere trifle compared to the first 2 gunshot wounds.

  That bullet was the last of the dying terrorist’s ammunition. Capt. Dangi stepped up quickly, pumping 10 rounds into him. Standing over him to make sure it was over, Capt. Dangi bent closer to take a look at the terrorist’s face.

  ‘Before I took the headshot, I recognized him. It was Adil.’

  Ten metres behind, Tribhuwan was still tending to the injured Mukesh and was unable to engage the third terrorist who had fled towards the stream. Capt. Dangi, bleeding heavily and losing strength, refused to be shifted out of the encounter site. Adil was dead, but this operation would be incomplete if the third man escaped.

  ‘I didn’t mind bleeding a little more. I knew I could deal with it,’ Capt. Dangi recalls. ‘If this guy made it to the stream, there was no way we were going to get him, at least not that day.’

  Capt. Dangi quietly moved in the direction where the terrorist had disappeared into the undergrowth. The large rucksack on his back gave the man’s location away.

  ‘I could see something moving. His rucksack blew his cover. It was sticking out as he crawled on his belly towards the stream.’

  His limbs stiffening from the pain and blood loss, Capt. Dangi stepped on the grass, his weapon ready. But this time there would be no firefight as the young officer crept up on the terrorist and killed him in a quick burst of close-range fire. It was time for Capt. Dangi to take another headshot.

  ‘The third man didn’t put up a fight. His commander was dead and all he wanted to do was escape. He had lost the will. It made my job easier,’ says Capt. Dangi.

  The officer did not stop to savour his victory. There were other priorities for now—Mukesh. Blood dripping to the ground, Capt. Dangi stumbled back to check on his buddy. Mukesh was still conscious.

  ‘Kaha tha na, do goliyan commando ko maarne ke liye kaafi nahi (Told you, 2 bullets aren’t enough to kill a commando),’ Capt. Dangi grinned.

  As the sun began its final descent, the two men smiled. From start to finish, the operation had lasted less than 20 minutes. From the time the first terrorist opened fire, till the time Capt. Dangi fired that final headshot, it had been just 8 minutes. The killing of Adil Ahmed Mir that evening in Buchoo village would be the definition of a lightning-quick operation. The 5 gunshot wounds suffered by 2 commandos were acceptable damage—every operation begins with the recognition that injuries are highly likely, if not fatal.

  The Casspir vehicle carried the team back to its operating base in Hardumir where an Army helicopter was waiting to fly Capt. Dangi and Mukesh to the 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar.

  In Rohtak, Ritu was close to panicking. Every passing minute had seemed like an eternity to her as she fought to keep away frightening thoughts. Like a good professional, Capt. Dangi had shared broad aspects of his work with his family, but never the specific details—as much for their own safety as his.

  What Ritu did know was that her fiancé operated in south Kashmir. Unable to bear the worry any longer, she contacted a paramilitary officer also deployed in Tral. The officer was a friend of her cousin’s. It was through him that Ritu learnt of Capt. Dangi’s mission to hunt a deadly terrorist commander. That piece of information was enough for Ritu to throw Capt. Dangi’s promise right out of the window—that he would call her back and not to worry. She began dialling his number repeatedly, but there was no response. The young commando’s phone happened to be with his team commander, a Major, who finally picked it up at 2100 hours.

  Ritu felt her skin crawl. In a calm tone, the Major informed her that Capt. Dangi had suffered minor injuries in the operation and had been admitted to hospital. Ritu phoned nobody else that night, neither her family nor Capt. Dangi’s mother. And she didn’t sleep. Through the night, she tried to contact Capt. Dangi, hoping his phone had somehow found its way back to him.

  But it wasn’t until the next morning that she finally heard his voice.

  Capt. Dangi’s CO and team commander arrived at the hospital to see him early on 20 June. The Major dialled Ritu’s number and handed the phone to Capt. Dangi.

  ‘I was too shy to speak to my fiancée in the presence of my CO and the team commander. I just told her I would speak to her after 2 days. She was silent. She wanted to talk. But she understood the situation I was in,’ he says.

  Their wedding had to be postponed from August to December as Capt. Dangi’s injuries needed time to heal. Both commandos were discharged from the base hospital after 3 weeks.

  Six months later, Capt. Jaidev Dangi was awarded India’s second highest peacetime gallantry award, the Kirti Chakra, on 25 January 2015 for showing ‘dauntless courage and extraordinary valour under heavy fire from close quarters in face of certain death.’ The award citation would note that ‘despite his near fatal injuries, the officer refused to be evacuated till the termination of operations’.

  He would receive the award from the President of India at the Rashtrapati Bhawan on 21 March 2015. With him was Ritu, his bride of 3 months, his mother and his best friend, C
apt. Pradeep Balhara of a sister SF unit.

  Capt. Dangi’s example has inspired many in and around Haryana’s Madina village to join the military.

  ‘Jaidev was the first boy from our school to join the NDA,’ says Ravinder Dangi, director at the Ramakrishna Paramhansa Senior Secondary School where Capt. Dangi had studied. ‘But now a steady stream of students joins the academy every year following in his footsteps. He will remain an inspiration for current and future generations of students.’

  School friends talk fondly of Jaidev, who still meets them on the rare occasion that he has time off from his duties. They remember how he once limped to school with his foot in a plaster cast as he did not want to miss classes.

  ‘I told him to take leave and rest. I loved his answer. He said he would rather sit in class than sit at home,’ the school director says.

  After the Buchoo operation, Capt. Dangi entered a Para refresher course that commandos have to undergo every year to hone their skills. It was during the toil of this course that Capt. Dangi would receive news about the gallantry decoration the recently elected Narendra Modi government had decided to pin on him.

  ‘No words can explain the joy and pride I felt when I was told I had been awarded the Kirti Chakra. I had never imagined in my dreams that I would come so far in life,’ says Capt. Dangi.

  The operation that killed Adil Ahmed Mir would be the first major SF win in Kashmir under the new Modi government, barely a month old at the time. It would become a touchstone referred to by the country’s security top brass as India’s Parachute Regiment units prepared for devastatingly more ambitious operations in the months that followed.

  SF officers rarely have time for leisure or other interests. In Capt. Dangi’s case, the binding nature of his work allows him hobbies not far removed from his professional duties. In the little spare time that Capt. Dangi gets, he pursues interests deeply related to the profession he has chosen for himself. He likes to fire different types of weapons, research tactics employed by global special operations units and read about military leaders. Mongol leader Genghis Khan, who rose from humble beginnings to carve out the largest empire in history, tops his list of favourites.

  Capt. Dangi’s beard was shaved off at the hospital to treat the wound on his cheek. As they cleaned him up, he remembers the mixed feelings he had at the time.

  ‘Ritu really loved that beard. I would have to grow it back really fast,’ he remembers.

  Following the operation in south Kashmir, Capt. Dangi was posted as an instructor at the NDA outside Pune, where cadets, like he once was, prepare for a military career. At the time this book was written, the young officer was waiting to complete the posting and return to the Kashmir valley to do what he likes the most.

  Hunt.

  6

  ‘Just Tell Me, Will He Live or Die?’

  Colonel Santosh Yashwant Mahadik

  Subaya, Jammu and Kashmir

  16 November 2015

  ‘Papa jaldi aao. Hum wait karenge. (Papa, return soon. We will be waiting for you.)’

  Kartikee Mahadik, 11 years old, threw her arms around her father’s neck. It was near midnight that night in May 2015. Kartikee’s little brother, Swaraj, waved from behind her. Their father was headed, with a group of his men, to Muhri, not far away, where a group of terrorists who had infiltrated across the LoC had been spotted.

  Kartikee was old enough to wonder why her father, the CO of the 41 Rashtriya Rifles, needed to personally lead every operation into the beautiful, unforgiving forests of north Kashmir that surrounded his field headquarters. She was old enough to know that battalion bosses were not required to physically front every mission, but play the nerve centre with command and control.

  Yet, she never once wondered.

  Which is why, 8 months later, when Col. Santosh Yashwant Mahadik phoned his wife, Swati, then staying 300 km away at the Army’s Northern Command Headquarters in Udhampur, she didn’t blink.

  It was freezing that night of 16 November 2015. Col. Mahadik and a team of his men had dashed by road from Kupwara to a thick sector of forests in the frontier hamlet of Subaya. It was the red alert the Colonel had been waiting for.

  Over the first half of November, along with the first snow, the trail of a small group of terrorists wearing white snow jackets and bearing suspiciously heavy backpacks had gone cold. They had been spotted by civilian porters on 3 November in Trumnar, a village within the 41 Rashtriya Rifles’ area of responsibility. Rushing to their destination at Kamkari, the porters had immediately notified officers at the 57 Rashtriya Rifles unit headquartered there about the suspicious men in snow gear. The men they saw were definitely not locals, the porters insisted, before they went on their way.

  An officer at the 57 Rashtriya Rifles immediately relayed the tip-off to Col. Mahadik’s unit, advising him to make preparations to intercept the suspicious group of men as they came down the Shamshabari mountains. The CO of the 41 Rashtriya Rifles immediately deployed teams to place ambushes along points near the range. For 3 days, the men searched, patrolled and waited. A fresh batch of snow, several feet deep, fell on 7 November—4 days after the hunt had begun.

  The soldiers were then redeployed on surveillance missions in the area. Two days later, on the afternoon of 9 November, fresh intelligence reached Col. Mahadik’s men that a body had been recovered from Trumnar, the village where the suspects had first been spotted. As always, the Colonel rushed to the site himself.

  The body had clearly been dumped there. The dead man’s weapon, an AK-47, lay by his side on the banks of a thin stream. A closer inspection revealed that the man’s legs had rotted from gangrene. Speaking to his contacts among Trumnar’s locals, Col. Mahadik made a quick deduction. The dead man was likely from the same group that had been spotted by the porters 3 days earlier. Snowfall and frostbite had clearly got to them. The 4 suspects had probably passed through the village, and this 1 man had been left behind because he could walk no further. He had then probably died in the care of someone ordered to look after him. Locals, fearing they would be held responsible for harbouring a terrorist, then probably dumped the body outside the settlement in a nala so sniffer dogs would not be able to detect it.

  The sighting of the corpse was confirmation that at least 3 others in the group had survived and were moving towards the Kashmir valley. On 10 November, Col. Mahadik launched operations at 2 sites—Kupwara’s Manigah and Baramulla’s Jugtial. Meticulous patrolling through snowbound forests and ridgelines revealed nothing. The hunt continued for 48 hours.

  At 0800 hours on 13 November, Col. Mahadik received word that one of the suspects had descended from a jungle and entered a hamlet near Trumnar to ask for food. Teams were rushed to the spot, but they were too late. The suspect had collected food and was already headed back up towards the jungles. Locals showed the Army team the direction in which he had gone.

  Following the trail up the hill, soldiers noticed someone attempting to conceal himself with a shawl. It was a hill track frequented by people from the village. When challenged, the man in the shawl turned around, revealing an assault rifle and opened a burst of fire. The spray of bullets hit 2 jawans, injuring them. As the Army team took cover, the weather and visibility worsened abruptly, bringing fresh rain and snow, allowing the man to escape.

  Over the next 2 days, the team searched grimly for the man who had got away. By 15 November, the team was exhausted after an uninterrupted phase of combat alert, and their morale had dipped considerably. They had effectively been on the hunt for 7 days and achieved nothing. Troubled but determined, the men were asked to return to their headquarters.

  As they moved back from the location, another group of soldiers took their place to continue the hunt, this time in the adjoining hamlet of Subaya. The team, from the 160 Territorial Army battalion, began scouring forests near the village. The 160 TA, comprising infantry soldiers, looked after intelligence operations and was co-located with Col. Mahadik’s 41 Rashtriya Rifles. The unit h
ad been deployed just to make sure nothing was amiss. But as they entered the area on the night of 16 November, they walked right into a firetrap.

  A soldier in the party, Rifleman Mohammad, received a gunshot straight in the leg, and the team was now pinned down by sustained fire from at least 2 quarters. The sun had set, and the clatter of Kalashnikov fire echoed through the forests that night.

  Back in Kupwara, Col. Mahadik was getting ready to meet local officials as part of Operation Sadbhavna, the Army’s ambitious mission to build bridges and, as the government officially states, ‘win the hearts and minds’ of the local population. At 2000 hours, he received word about the ‘contact’ that had been made in the general area of Subaya village.

  Col. Mahadik summoned his men, which included a few J&K Police special operations group jawans, climbed into his vehicle and sped towards Subaya. He and his teams reached the area and formed a wide cordon to hem the suspects in. Col. Mahadik climbed to a vantage point and established a quick surveillance post that often proves crucial in such operations. He needed to ensure that the entire area could be seen. His weapon ready and the cordon in force, they carefully extracted injured Rifleman Mohammad from the forest and transported him to safety. Up in his perch, the Colonel spent an uncomfortable, cold night, his gaze scanning the swathe of dark, nebulous forest before him.

  Early the next morning, on 17 November, Army reinforcements had been called in to join the hunt. Now an infantryman, Col. Mahadik had a special strength urging him on—he was a commando himself, originally from an elite Para-SF unit. In 2003, he had earned a Sena Medal for bravery in action against the United Liberation Front of Assam terrorists in the North-east. Twelve years later, he had volunteered to lead a counter-insurgency unit in the restive Kashmir valley. He knew what the Paras brought to any fight. They were most welcome.