India’s Most Fearless

by Aroor, Shiv

  As the search continued with renewed aggression, Col. Mahadik received a call on his cell phone. It was from a local source, one of many he had cultivated as friends during his time in the Valley. The voice at the other end of the line kept it brief: 1 suspect had come down a hill in the Kashmiri Manigah area nearby and requested food from villagers there. The Colonel had no reason to doubt the information he had just been supplied. And once again, with his men deployed in the active operation, he decided to act on the information himself.

  He gathered half of his Quick Reaction Team (QRT) and the J&K Police jawans who had accompanied him, jumped into 2 squad vehicles and made straight for Manigah. When they arrived, it became clear that the suspect had headed back up the mountainside and into the jungles. Col. Mahadik reconnected with his source from the ground. There was more information. The suspect likely had at least 2 more men for company up in the jungles. The officer smelt the end of an operation that had stretched for a full 2 weeks now.

  The 14 men were quickly split into 2 teams of 7 and sent in 2 different directions to begin their search. The terrain was familiar and taxing. A nala cascaded down the mountainside, with ridgelines ascending on both sides. An hour-long search revealed nothing. The teams patrolled along the nala on their way back to the village. Just outside the village, they stopped for a quick break to plan their next move. It was there that one of them spotted it.

  A bottle of mineral water, its top half cut off to make a tumbler, sat precariously on a rock. Next to it was a battered cooking utensil with some freshly cooked food—rice and meat. Commanded by Col. Mahadik, the men immediately took cover positions. Two things were immediately and disturbingly clear. The suspects were definitely nearby. That was the good news. The bad: they had likely abandoned their precious food because they had spotted the Army team, and were therefore almost certainly in a position of advantage.

  ‘It was an extremely tense situation. We had no time to readjust. We needed to quickly make our next move, or we stood the risk of being ambushed and massacred,’ remembers a jawan who was in the team that morning.

  Col. Mahadik wasted no time. He quickly sent one half of the team up the ridgeline to gain a vantage position, crucial to a situation where they didn’t know where a burst of fire would come from. Col. Mahadik and his team of 7 moved laterally across the ridgeline. As they did so, one of the police jawans noticed a black pheran behind a tall bush right ahead. He held the Colonel back, pointing straight ahead and alerting him to 2 men hiding behind the foliage. The men were ordered to cock their weapons and pull the chain levers on their rifles to ‘rapid’ mode, which allowed for a burst of fire. Single shots weren’t going to be of use in this fight.

  As the team inched forward, one of the terrorists abruptly changed position. The other remained where he was. Stopping in his tracks, and motioning to the other men to stand back, Col. Mahadik raised his weapon and fired a few rounds directly at the bush. Four of his men were in cover fire positions, while 3 stood with him as he fired. But it was the other terrorist, who had shifted position moments earlier, who fired back. And this was from a position the Colonel and the 3 men next to him didn’t have their eyes on. A hail of rifle rounds tore through him as he fell to the ground.

  Nobody could see where the firing had come from. The 3 men with Mahadik were in the open and totally vulnerable. They dropped on to their bellies, waiting for a certain follow-up volley of bullets. Their CO knew that if he didn’t act fast, his men would be butchered in the open. Despite his gunshot wounds, Col. Mahadik crawled forward towards the ridgeline.

  Word about the CO having been shot hadn’t yet reached the other teams because Col. Mahadik was the one with the radio set. Teams attempting to make contact with him thought he was silent so as not to alert the terrorists. With blood gushing from his many wounds, Col. Mahadik heaved himself across the ridgeline to the other side. Hauling himself up over a rock, he opened fire on the positions where he assumed the terrorists were hiding. The bullets he fired didn’t find the terrorists, but effectively pinned them to their positions.

  By firing continuously while still exposed and wounded, he basically ensured that the terrorists did not fire at the men behind him. He was running out of ammunition and began pacing his fire to keep the terrorists on the defensive for as long as possible so that his men could get to safety.

  By this time, other Army teams had reached the location, but there was nobody to brief them on the situation because the CO was down. Desperate to make contact with the team up on the ridgeline, a Havildar in charge of the QRT team called one of the Police special operations group jawans on his mobile phone.

  ‘Saab ko goli lagi hai (Sir has been shot),’ he reported back. It was the first information from the fight.

  The Havildar rushed to the ridgeline where Col. Mahadik lay. As the other men provided covering fire, he picked up the CO and carried him down the hill to a location 1.5 km from the roadhead. Evacuation by helicopter wasn’t possible because the Manigah area was located in a narrow valley. Pale from blood loss, his body already turning cold, Col. Mahadik was driven to the nearest site of hope—the 168 Military Hospital in Drugmulla, just off the Sopore–Kupwara highway. Doctors at the hospital quickly declared that they couldn’t revive the Colonel and suggested he be flown immediately to the Army’s Base Hospital in Srinagar 85 km away.

  ‘While Col. Mahadik was being airlifted to Srinagar, I received a call from his wife. She had already heard,’ remembers Maj. Pravin, then Adjutant at 41 Rashtriya Rifles headquarters. ‘Her question still haunts me. All she asked was ‘Zinda rahenge ya nahi rahenge? Bas itna bata do (Will he live or not? Just tell me that).’

  Maj. Pravin did not know what to say. He knew that she knew the truth. But he still hoped that the doctors at 92 Base Hospital, often magicians in their abilities, could bring Col. Mahadik back.

  ‘She called again a short while later. This time, she asked me a question that haunts me even more,’ remembers Maj. Pravin. ‘She asked how many rounds had hit her husband. I mustered my strength to inform her that he had taken 7 bullets and that he was unlikely to survive. She said nothing further and hung up the phone.’

  Col. Mahadik was declared brought dead at the 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar.

  At the time this was written, Col. Mahadik’s wife was at the Officers Training Academy in Chennai, gearing up to become an Army officer. Less than a year after her husband’s passing, she decided she wanted to wear the olive-green uniform. It was a difficult decision that forced her to send her 2 young children away to boarding schools in Maharashtra and Uttarakhand. Like they never did when their father picked up his weapon and ventured out at night, Kartikee and Swaraj never once wondered why their mother, well past the age to be a cadet, has decided to be an Army officer.

  ‘We didn’t think this was the right way forward. But she is an incredibly courageous lady. She wishes to take her husband’s unfinished work forward,’ says Maj. Pravin, who continues to be deployed in the Kashmir valley.

  The Colonel’s unfinished work has nothing to do with the terrorists who managed to escape that day. They were perhaps only incidental to a larger mission he had assumed for himself in a beautiful and dangerous land. His business was war, but accounts of what Col. Mahadik was engaged with in Kupwara suggest he was looking to sow every last bit of goodness he possibly could in the terrain and the people around him.

  From sessions on inspirational leadership for children in Kupwara to yoga camps and lessons in adventure tourism, Col. Mahadik took the task of winning the hearts and minds of people as seriously as he took his fighting. Described by his men and peers as a visionary, the Army has spent the months since his demise studying the work he did in Kupwara.

  Warned by local leaders that yoga would not be accepted by the predominantly Muslim population, in 2014, the Colonel decided to send a group of 15 citizens to Pune to attend a camp conducted by the Siddha Samadhi Yoga programme. The group returned with a request that the organi
zation set up a special camp in Kupwara. A group from Pune arrived shortly thereafter to conduct special sessions for children and local traders in Kupwara, with a promise to institutionalize yoga in the town.

  ‘He had an outstanding rapport with Kupwara’s citizens. He met locals very often and sometimes kept an open house. He did for Kupwara tourism what local government officials haven’t even tried to,’ says an officer who was deployed with him at the 41 Rashtriya Rifles.

  Maj. Pravin concurs. ‘Col. Mahadik never really believed that the military was a lasting solution in this area, and that we are only here temporarily—we must leave this beautiful land even better than we found it,’ he says.

  During his time in Kupwara, there was a discernible change in the public perception of the Army, say men who served under the Colonel.

  ‘Separatists from the Hurriyat would often attack Col. Mahadik through the local media or through statements issued in public,’ recalls a jawan of the 41 Rashtriya Rifles. ‘They didn’t like how he was reaching out to the locals and having an impact on their lives. They warned him to simply do his work and get out. All that never bothered him.’

  Col. Mahadik’s leadership by example would become legend well beyond his unit, and has already become a touchstone of what inspiring COs do.

  ‘Even as a CO, he would go and sit in ambushes for 2–3 days, which is unusual for someone of his seniority and rank. He enjoyed being in the field with his men,’ says Maj. Pravin. ‘He always said that every officer is a soldier, and every soldier is a leader. He truly believed that. He never differentiated between the two.’

  Soldiers in his unit remember the unusual level of personal interest the Colonel took in the well-being of men under his charge. They speak of a particular jawan from Col. Mahadik’s state, Maharashtra, who was distressed following bitter marital discord. As divorce proceedings began, Col. Mahadik invited the jawan’s wife and children to Kupwara, acquiring special permission from the Army so they could stay on-site for a month. Over that month, Col. Mahadik counselled the couple. The two decided not to separate and are still together. A few weeks later, the domestic problems of another jawan were similarly resolved.

  ‘It is very rare for officers to get so deeply involved in the personal lives of their soldiers. It earns them loyalty of a kind that cannot be put into words,’ Maj. Pravin says.

  Five days after Col. Mahadik was lost, 1 of the terrorists was killed in an encounter with soldiers from the 160 TA at Haji Nakah. What became of the remaining 2 terrorists is as yet unknown.

  An image remains imprinted in the mind of an Army officer who accompanied the family as Col. Mahadik’s remains were transported by air from Udhampur to Pune that November.

  ‘Swaraj sat on the coffin, playing. He was too young to know what had happened,’ the officer remembers. ‘He was oblivious. I just sat and watched him play.’

  7

  ‘I Got Hit. I Can’t Believe It’

  Major Mukund Varadarajan

  Yachu Guchan, Jammu and Kashmir

  June 2013

  Single 7.62-mm shots rang out through the air. The Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist commander was cornered. Two terrifying odds loomed before him as he crouched with his AK-47. One, he had a single ammunition magazine left. And two, the 12-man Indian Army team that had him cornered was led by Maj. Mukund Varadarajan.

  It was a warm June evening in 2013 and Altaf Baba knew the end was near. One of the most fiercely hunted terrorists in Kashmir, he knew he did not have a choice but to fight until everything faded to black. The apple orchard in south Kashmir’s Yachu Guchan village he had chosen as his final hiding place was in bloom, but the fruit would not be ripe for picking until 2 months later.

  Altaf Baba had not been following a cardinal rule he had learnt from his Pakistani handlers. According to that rule, terrorists should keep their weapons in full automatic mode during a firefight with Indian forces to maximize the possibility of inflicting damage. Now down to his last magazine, Altaf Baba had no choice but to fire 1 bullet at a time to draw the encounter out for as long as possible. Hemmed in by a dozen of the Indian Army’s most determined hunters, the terrorist seemed to know that this was his final fight, and that escape was impossible.

  But he was not the only one counting his bullets. Several feet away, taking cover with his men from the 44 Rashtriya Rifles battalion, Maj. Varadarajan was counting them too. Each and every bullet fired from within the orchard was duly noted.

  ‘He is running out of ammunition,’ Maj. Varadarajan whispered to his buddy, Sepoy Vikram Singh, correctly guessing the reason why the terrorist was not firing a spray of bullets. ‘I will take him down after he has fired 30 rounds.’

  The arithmetic was crucial. A regular Kalashnikov magazine holds 30 7.62-mm rounds. And Maj. Varadarajan knew how many rounds from his last magazine the terrorist had already fired.

  17 . . . 16 . . . 15 . . . 14 . . .

  Half a magazine was left. Maj. Varadarajan knew it was more than enough ammunition in the hands of a cornered, determined, military-trained terrorist to kill at least 5 men before being stopped. He waited, his finger on his weapon’s trigger, as the shots continued to ring out.

  9 . . . 8 . . . 7 . . . 6 . . . 5 . . . 4 . . .

  With deliberate pauses, Altaf Baba expended the last of his bullets.

  As Maj. Varadarajan had predicted, the firing stopped. The young Major had spent the previous 25 minutes taking cover, and was fully ready for his next move. With Vikram providing cover fire, the 6-feet-3-inches-tall Maj. Varadarajan emerged from his position and charged directly at the terrorist’s position inside the orchard. Sprinting the short distance in a few long strides, the officer arrived with his weapon blazing. Altaf Baba was thrown off the ground in a hail of point-blank fire, landing with a crunch in the leafy undergrowth, dead.

  Standing over the remains of the Jaish commander, Maj. Varadarajan took off his bulletproof headgear and fished out a Motorola handset from a pouch in his combat fatigues. He had to report the operation’s success to his CO. Altaf Baba, a native of Pakharpora, oversaw all terror operations for the Pakistan-supported Jaish-e-Mohammed in south Kashmir. This was a big kill.

  ‘Sir, there’s good news. We got Altaf,’ Maj. Varadarajan said as he wiped the sweat off his forehead before placing his headgear back on. The terrorist had been killed, but officers and soldiers can rarely afford to let their guard down.

  ‘How can you be so sure it’s him, Maddy?’

  The voice at the other end of the satellite line was Col. Amit Singh Dabas, the battle-hardened CO of 44 Rashtriya Rifles who was at his headquarters in Zawora Manlo, near the apple town of Shopian.

  ‘I am standing over his corpse, sir,’ Maj. Varadarajan replied. ‘I’m looking at his face.’

  Col. Dabas, a decorated SF officer, quickly realized that Maj. Varadarajan was no ordinary soldier. The Major had been posted under his charge in the Kashmir valley barely 3 months prior to the incident. It was proving to be difficult for the Colonel not to like him. From the day they first met, Maj. Varadarajan was christened ‘Maddy’ by the CO.

  ‘I thought he looked like the spitting image of the film actor, Madhavan. Maj. Varadarajan was also from Chennai. So I started calling him Maddy and the name stuck,’ says Col. Dabas.

  Maj. Varadarajan’s tactic of counting Altaf Baba’s final round of bullets soon became the talk of not just the 44 Rashtriya Rifles, but other battalions operating in south Kashmir as well, a hotbed for Pakistan-backed terrorists. He became known as the ‘44 RR Major’ who was so remarkably composed during a firefight that he could actually keep count of the bullets that were fired in his direction.

  The legend would also be a source of amusement at the unit. Mathematics had never been Maj. Varadarajan’s forte and he would often share with fellow officers how he had a hard time not failing at mathematics in school. On one occasion, when the Altaf Baba encounter came up for discussion during a round of drinks at the unit mess, a fellow company comma
nder joked, ‘Thank God you didn’t goof up with your counting, Maddy. Look at your size! You think that bugger would have missed you?’

  The jokes at Maj. Varadarajan’s expense were fine in the atmosphere of brotherhood and bonhomie at 44 Rashtriya Rifles. But not one of them had any delusions about just how crucial the killing of Altaf Baba was for the security forces. The terror commander had been steering an effort to establish linkages between the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Hizbul Mujahideen to synchronize and amplify the terror machine’s effectiveness in south Kashmir. His killing would be a crucial step forward in the fight against established Jaish and Hizb networks in the area. Apart from the dead terrorist, mobile phones and coded matrix sheets found on his person left a trail for investigators. This eventually provided vital leads to help identify routes used by terror cadres and the civilian overground operatives supporting, protecting and facilitating them.

  In the months that followed Altaf Baba’s killing, Maj. Varadarajan’s focus was on deciphering the codes he had found on the terrorist. And for that, he made repeated visits to the Army’s electronic warfare detachment in Srinagar.

  ‘He was in Srinagar every second day for several weeks to find out what progress the electronic warfare detachment had made,’ remembers Col. Dabas. ‘He knew that the codes masked solid details.’

  Cracking the codes became an obsession. The young officer had become unusually convinced that the information that lay encrypted in the codes would lead to bigger terrorist targets and plans. The belief consumed Maj. Varadarajan for weeks—officers at his unit recall how there was little else he would speak about.

  Three months after the encounter, Army specialists finally cracked the codes, allowing Maj. Varadarajan to piece together several vital details crucial to counterterror operations in and around Shopian. Maj. Varadarajan’s suspicion had been proven true—the codes provided extremely specific information. Chief among the secrets they held was a specific reference to a group of houses on a hilltop in Qazipathri village overlooking Shopian town. These houses sheltered terrorists on their transit from the Yarwan forests to Shopian and beyond. As soon as Maj. Varadarajan received the classified report, he went to his CO with a satellite map identifying the houses.