by Shiv Aroor
In Chandimandir, Mohit met and fell in love with Captain Rishma Sareen, an officer with the Army Service Corps (ASC). Months into their relationship, in early 2004, Mohit would be summoned back to Kashmir. It was at this time that he would spend weeks planning a dangerous, deep-cover mission to kill the two dreaded Hizbul Mujahideen recruiters, Abu Torara and Abu Sabzar, near Shopian. The hair-raising mission would win him a Sena Medal, with a deliberately vague citation crafted to mask the true nature of what he had managed to achieve. The mission instantly became legendary.
‘He did share that story with me a few weeks later, when he came to see me,’ says Rishma, now a Lieutenant Colonel posted with an Army unit in Haryana. ‘The story shocked me—it would have scared anyone. I asked him to please be careful. I mean, I knew for sure that he was very good at what he did. I knew he planned everything very well. He was very meticulous by nature. He was professionally very sound. So I didn’t panic, but I did ask him to be careful.’
On 19 November 2004, Mohit and Rishma were married in Chandigarh. Two months later, with less than two years of Special Forces experience under his belt, Mohit was dispatched to Belagavi (previously Belgaum) in northern Karnataka for two years to serve as an instructor at the prestigious Commando Training Wing of the Infantry School there, followed by a two-year stint in Nahan in the hills of Himachal Pradesh, home base of the 1 Para unit and the Indian Army’s Special Forces Training School (SFTS), the largest elite warfare training institute in the country. While there, he would drive every week to see his wife, who was posted at the Army base in Patiala, a little over two hours away by road. Mohit’s parents had welcomed the idea of their son working at the two training schools. He had won two gallantry awards in J&K—surely he had nothing more to prove?
The training in Nahan was pointed in one direction, and one direction only—which his parents knew but dreaded. In October 2008, Mohit, now a Major, was summoned back to Kashmir, arriving on the threshold of one of the fiercest winters in decades.
Over the next five months, through steadily worsening weather, Maj. Mohit and his team of Special Forces men would prowl the countryside in the forbidding snow-blown stretches of northern Kashmir, operating alongside the RR as he had at the start of his career.
In spring 2009, when the snow had reluctantly begun to melt, Maj. Mohit and his team were at their base in Kupwara. It was the afternoon of 20 March. His buddy, 1 Havildar Rajeev Kumar, then twenty-two years old and holding the rank of Paratrooper, remembers it like it was yesterday.
‘It’s been more than ten years, but there are some things that you can never forget throughout your life,’ says Havildar Rajeev. ‘I remember the sequence of events very clearly. We were being briefed by our team leader, Maj. Mohit, at our base in the Kupwara sector about an anti-terror operation to be conducted in Bangus Valley. 2 Mohit Sir had a solid network of informants and he had received some intelligence about terrorist activity in that area. We were deployed in Kupwara with 7 Sector, RR. While Maj. Sir briefed us, he got a call from the Sector Commander. We knew it was an important call because he cut the briefing short. The Sector Commander told Mohit Sir that a terror squad had crossed the LoC and was hiding in the dense Haphruda forest. Our team leader told us that the Bangus operation was no longer on and we would all be proceeding towards Haphruda instead.’
The team knew immediately that something big was unfolding at Haphruda. Every man in that briefing room was familiar with the tone and tenor of Maj. Mohit’s voice. This was clearly something urgent, something that could not wait. The men didn’t have all the details yet, but they knew they had been placed on quick reaction alert, which meant they were poised to leave their base within minutes of being asked to do so.
Tavor TAR-21 assault rifle
‘Within a few minutes of that call from the Sector Commander, we left our base at 3 p.m. and headed towards the headquarters of the 6 RR Battalion based at Vilgam,’ says Havildar Rajeev. ‘We always stay ready for operations and can launch within minutes. It was dinnertime, about 9 p.m., when we reached Vilgam. There were twenty-five of us, including Maj. Mohit.’
After reaching the 6 RR base, Maj. Mohit quickly met the CO of 6 RR, receiving a briefing on the infiltration and the operation he now needed to launch and lead. He then communicated the full picture to his team, including a situation report from the forest. An hour earlier, a team from 6 RR had spotted some terrorists in the Haphruda forest and fired at them—for the second time that day. The terrorists had managed to give their attackers the slip again and had ventured deeper into the darkness of Haphruda.
The reason Maj. Mohit’s team had been called in was clear. It was to hunt down the terrorists that had escaped the 6 RR net. It was unclear how many terrorists there were in the group, and details about their movements remained sketchy at that point. The one thing they were told, beyond doubt, was that the terrorists had infiltrated into north Kashmir two days earlier, on 18 March.
A series of briefings followed that night, continuing till very late. Maj. Mohit’s team then rolled out from Vilgam at 2.30 a.m., marching on foot towards the 6 RR’s Alpha company base on an approach to the Haphruda forest. The men reached before dawn, at around 4 a.m., on 21 March. The RR men there knew that the Special Forces team was coming and were waiting for them. In the shadow of the looming Haphruda forest, Maj. Mohit met the 6 RR Alpha company commander, also an Army Major.
The 6 RR squad that had fired at the terrorists was from the Alpha company. Maj. Mohit and his men asked an officer and two men from the Alpha company to take the Special Forces team to the point where they had fired at the terrorists, which was nearly 700 m inside the forest. He then told the 6 RR men to return to base, saying the operation would be conducted from that point by the Special Forces team. Maj. Mohit’s team checked their weapons again before trudging deeper into Haphruda.
Another soldier from Maj. Mohit’s team, Naik Hajari Lal Gurjar, holding the rank of Paratrooper at the time, recalls how the next few hours played out.
‘The sun had risen and was out in the skies, but the Haphruda forest is so dense that sunlight doesn’t reach the ground in many of its parts,’ says Naik Hajari Lal. ‘It was a deviously thick forest, offering a large number of hiding places to terrorists. It was around 8 a.m. and it seemed like it was the middle of the night. A few minutes later, we noticed something. It was our first clue. We could see footmarks in the snow. It had to be the terrorists. Mohit Sir asked us to be very careful, watch every step we took, and scan every nook and cranny around us.’
‘Woh jungle itna bada hai ki kuch pata nahin woh kahan chhupe ho sakte the (The forest was so vast that there was no way to tell where they could have been hiding),’ says Havildar Rajeev. ‘The ground was covered in a sheet of snow at least two-and-a-half feet deep. The entire squad halted as soon as we saw the footprints.’
Maj. Mohit’s team had been split into three squads by this time, with eight men each. One man from the team had been asked to remain at the 6 RR Alpha company base to coordinate with the 1 Para Battalion headquarters in Srinagar, in case additional forces were needed.
One squad was led by Maj. Mohit himself, along with his buddy, Havildar Rajeev. The second squad was led by Naib Subedar Uttam Chand with his buddy, Naik Hajari Lal, and the third was led by Havildar Rakesh. The second squad, led by Naib Subedar Uttam Chand, was ordered to deploy along an elevated ridge inside the forest, so it could keep an eye on the other two squads moving forward on lower ground and give them warning or cover, if required. The two squads, led by Maj. Mohit and Havildar Rakesh, followed the footsteps in the snow, moving forward as noiselessly as possible.
‘The terrorists were moving very cleverly, most likely in single file,’ says Havildar Rajeev. ‘It appeared that the terrorists following the lead terrorist were deliberately stepping right into his footmarks and moving forward, so it was difficult to even guess how many terrorists we were hunting that day. A small thing, but a pointer to how well they were trained to
evade us.’
Separated by a short distance, the two squads on lower ground trudged forward, crossing a ridge after a few minutes and halting. Maj. Mohit ordered the third squad to move quickly and hold that ridge, and then continued to move forward soundlessly. Every soldier in the forest that day remembers how silent it was that morning.
The men then hit a patch where the snow had melted, washing away further footprints. The trail they had been following ended abruptly. The men stopped, looking carefully in every direction for where the footprints could have moved to next.
‘At that point, we got a call over the radio from the three men from 6 RR’s Alpha company, who had earlier been asked by Mohit Sir to return before the Special Forces could take over the operation,’ remembers Havildar Rajeev. ‘All of us had radios, and all of us could listen to the conversation. The Major from 6 RR said that they had spotted footprints in the snow in another location inside Haphruda. So we linked up with the three men from 6 RR. Now we were two squads of sixteen men plus the three RR men, including their company commander. The third squad continued to move on higher ground to cover us. We again started following the footprints. But once again, we hit a dead end. There was no snow there, there was a small nallah 3 and the footprints just vanished.’
Just as the squads were deliberating about which direction to head in, there was a breakthrough.
The team’s scout, Paratrooper Netra Singh, who was marching ahead of Maj. Mohit’s squad, froze in his tracks and relayed a message over the radio that he had spotted two terrorists. He quickly added that the terrorists had spotted him too at virtually the same moment.
And then it began.
‘Less than a second after Netra Singh radioed us about the two terrorists, our squad came under heavy automatic fire,’ says Havildar Rajeev. ‘Netra took a bullet straight to his forehead and collapsed to the ground. He was killed instantly, the first casualty of the operation. Nothing could be done. It was a headshot.’
In seconds, the intensity of the attack escalated, with bullets flying in from multiple directions now.
‘It is hard to explain the intensity of that incoming fire,’ says Havildar Rajeev. ‘Bullets were flying all around us. They seemed to be coming from all directions. We all fell flat on our stomachs and took whatever cover we could. Someone took cover behind a tree, someone took cover behind a boulder. Jo kuch bhi humein mila, humne ussi ke peeche cover le liya (We took cover behind whatever we could find).’
It was 11 a.m., and it was clear that the terrorists were spread out ahead of the squads. The bullets were flying in from the front. Maj. Mohit ordered the men to engage the terrorists by approaching them from the right. The moment a pair of soldiers tried to crawl in that direction to take position, they were pushed back with heavy firing from the right. It was now abundantly clear that they weren’t up against just one small group of terrorists.
An attempt to engage the terrorists from the left was met with a similar burst of pre-emptive fire. The terrorists knew exactly where the squads were. And the firing was becoming more accurate.
‘Jis tarah se hum par firing ho rahi thi, aisa lag raha tha ki terrorists ne humein gher liya hai (The way we were coming under heavy fire, it seemed the terrorists had surrounded us),’ says Havildar Rajeev, who was, at that time, crouched behind a tree a few metres away from his team leader. ‘The pattern of firing made it clear that the terrorists had spread out in a semicircle, in a C-shape, ahead of us and that’s why it appeared that bullets were coming in from all sides. They had formed an arc around 50–60 m away and all of them had AK-47s. So their guns were very effective at that range. They were terrorists trained military-style. It was obvious, given the way they brought us under fire.’
Then Maj. Mohit radioed Havildar Rakesh, who was leading the second ground squad, and told him to head left, try to get up on a ridge and engage the terrorists. The moment Havildar Rakesh headed in that direction with his squad, the terrorists started firing at them. His squad split into four buddy pairs and fired back at the terrorists with their Israeli Tavor TAR-21 assault rifles.
‘In front of my eyes, Rakesh was hit by a burst of bullets in his thigh,’ says Havildar Rajeev. ‘His leg seemed to have been split open. He immediately removed his combat patka (the scarf that Special Forces men wear) and administered himself first aid to prevent excessive blood loss. And right through this he kept firing at the terrorists with one hand.’
With one man dead and another badly injured, Maj. Mohit quickly realized that their vulnerability had gone up several notches. Quickly assessing the situation, he decided that the squads needed to retreat a short distance to find protective cover, so they had a moment away from the line of fire to plan their counter-attack.
‘The terrorists clearly had the better position,’ says Havildar Rajeev. ‘I asked Mohit Sir to move back and take cover, but he kept firing and said he would stay right there and engage the terrorists so that other squad members could move back and take cover. I said, “Sahab, aap pehle cover lo. Main inko sambhalta hoon (Sahab, you take cover first. I will handle them).” But Mohit Sir said, “Main nahin, tum jao. Main last mein aaoonga (Not me, you take cover. I’ll take cover in the end).”’
Havildar Rakesh’s squad continued to return fire from halfway up the ridge. The squad on higher ground, led by Naik Subedar Uttam Chand, hadn’t yet linked up with the two ground squads at that point. As Maj. Mohit provided cover fire to the squads pulling back, a bullet tore into his left arm. Havildar Rajeev watched as his team leader quickly tied his patka around the wound to prevent blood loss, and then resumed firing non-stop at the terrorists.
‘I called out to him, saying, “Sir, pull back, let me check your wound.” He replied, “Nothing has happened to me. I have only been shot in the arm, Rajeev. You keep firing and moving back till you have good cover. Don’t worry about me. Don’t stop firing.”’
The sun was high in the sky by this time, but none of the men could see it.
‘The idea was to get in the nallah and get cover as soon as possible,’ says Havildar Rajeev. ‘Netra Singh shaheed ho gaye the, Rakesh Sir ko kaafi goliyan lagi thi aur Mohit Sir bhi ghayal the (Netra Singh was dead, Rakesh and Maj. Mohit were injured).’
Still firing from the front, Maj. Mohit ordered a soldier on his squad, Lance Naik Subhash Singh, to fire at the terrorists with his multi-grenade launcher (MGL). But just as the soldier positioned himself to fire the grenades, a bullet tore through his elbow, incapacitating him. There was no way he could effectively operate the weapon.
‘Mohit Sir saw Subhash getting hit, ordered him to move back and took his MGL,’ says Havildar Rajeev, who, by this time, had taken cover and was still firing at the terrorists. ‘Mohit Sir then started firing the MGL at the terrorists. By now, his entire squad had taken cover. Mohit Sir fired six grenades from the MGL in the direction from where the maximum fire was coming at us. After that bombardment, the firing from the terrorists slowed down considerably. Woh shaant ho gaye the . Firing bahut kamm ho gayi thi. We didn’t know it at the time, but the bombardment had killed four terrorists.’
As the smoke from the grenades cleared, Maj. Mohit crept back towards the rest of his men to finally take cover alongside them. Just as he was about to reach them, a bullet smashed into the left of his chest. His bulletproof vest provided protection in the front and back, but the sides remained vulnerable. The bullet tore right through him. He staggered a little, but stayed on his feet. Havildar Rajeev rushed to his team leader.
‘I am fine, Rajeev, these are not serious wounds,’ Maj. Mohit told his buddy. ‘Keep firing at them. We cannot let them get away today.’
By this time, the squad deployed on higher ground reached the site of the firefight. Naik Hajari Lal, who was on that squad, saw a clearly injured Maj. Mohit leaning against a tree and firing at the terrorists without pause.
‘Mohit Sir kept telling my squad ki terrorists ko bhagne nahi dena . Upar se fire karo inn par (that don’t let the terrori
sts escape. Fire at them from your height). The only thought in his mind was that the terrorists should not escape. It appeared to us that there were around eight to ten terrorists, given the volume of incoming fire.’
Maj. Mohit had turned visibly pale from blood loss. But he didn’t stop firing. And over the roar of the crossfire, the men could hear their team leader on the radio, his voice short of breath now, ‘Firing rukni nahi chahiye. Hum issi ke liye SF [Special Forces] mein hain aur issi ke liye train karte hain (Don’t stop firing. We joined the SF [Special Forces] for this and this is what we train for day in and day out).’
Havildar Rakesh’s squad then got their rocket launchers out and started firing at the terrorists, giving the soldiers a chance to climb higher up and assume what they hoped would be an advantageous position. Maj. Mohit had stopped firing by this time. He was sitting with his back against the tree he had taken cover behind.
‘Buri tarah woh ghayal ho gaye the (He was grievously injured),’ Havildar Rajeev says. ‘Poore squad ko unhone wahan se nikala tha (In that condition, he had helped the entire squad take cover).’
The situation was grim.
‘Four commandos in our squad had been hit,’ remembers Havildar Rajeev. ‘Netra was no more, the man behind him was also injured, Subhash had been hit and Mohit Sir had taken bullets. Despite being so gravely injured, he kept firing for as long as he could, kept telling us not to leave cover, and keep engaging the terrorists. He just refused to stop.’
Minutes later, Havildar Rakesh would be killed in the crossfire. Attempts by the other soldiers to pull him to safety failed, because the terrorists were using his body as a trap—whenever somebody tried to crawl towards him, the terrorists would start firing to cause more casualties.
Maj. Mohit had gone completely still, but his eyes were open. Firing from the terrorists prevented the soldiers from reaching him.