by Shiv Aroor
Apart from institutionalized outreach methods that included medical camps, vocational training and career counselling sessions, David tried to use football to win over local youth and divert their minds from the lure of militancy. It wasn’t difficult for David—if there was one thing he prized nearly as much as Army life, it was the beautiful game. All through his time at the Army Public School and St Anthony’s College in Shillong, David had been obsessed with football. When he moved to Delhi, football followed him.
‘I can’t forget the way David would guide the whole team and take full responsibility,’ says Sagar Pande, David’s classmate at the management institute. ‘He was an amazing centre forward and used to make some of the best passes I’ve ever seen on the ground. He made sure that every player on the ground was contributing to the game as per his potential.’
A major fan of international football, but even more obsessively, a follower of the North-east’s football clubs, David’s Facebook page stands testimony to just how closely he tracked even the smallest games. Only weeks after he took position as company commander in Tizit, he began organizing football tournaments, drawing local youth from surrounding villages. The games would be fiercely competitive and sometimes even turn violent. But David didn’t mind. He wanted the youth to be emotionally invested in anything but militancy.
His CO, Col. Prakash, had known immediately that David was special. Unusually motivated and with an action-oriented ethic, he had proven, in just two years of operations in Nagaland, how young officers with comparatively little experience in the area could lead with both lethality and empathy. As the arrests of NSCN terrorists piled up, David’s energy levels seemed to permeate his company, transforming it into a highly energized unit in one of the most challenging conflict-ridden areas in the country. In August 2016, the results delivered by a troop team under his leadership in Dimapur won David the Chief of Army Staff’s commendation from the Army Chief at the time, Gen. Dalbir Singh, a man who had served as Eastern Commander and personally recognized the worth of the young officer’s difficult work.
The operation itself had become legendary in the unit. David and an officer from the Army’s Para Special Forces had chased a highly prized commander of the NSCN(K) in broad daylight in Dimapur, overpowering him and capturing him alive. The captive turned out to be a major source of intelligence on the location and movement of terrorist logistics from Myanmar, across Nagaland and into Assam.
In Shillong, David’s parents were proud of the award. And Khamzalam knew that it meant his son had truly thrown himself into his work. He sent David a text message that evening: ‘Keep making us and your unit proud, son, but take care of yourself and get enough rest.’
The award scarcely interrupted David’s work, coming as it did in the middle of an operation near the Myanmar border. He had been moved from Mokokchung to Mon district, at Nagaland’s northern tip, with Assam to the west and north, Arunachal Pradesh to the north-east and, most significantly, an international border with Myanmar to the east.
David was excited about the move—a patch of international border in his area of responsibility provided an even greater canvas for combat. But for the young officer, the move up the chain of responsibility also served as a reminder that he had less than a year to go with the 164 Infantry Battalion. And given that he had served back-to-back in two operational areas, it was almost certain he would be sent next to a peace posting, effectively a desk job, for a few years before he could be circled back into active missions. The prospect disturbed him greatly.
‘He was simply unwilling to accept a staff posting,’ says the officer who served with him. ‘He had got it in his head that he needed to stay in active operations at all costs. One of the avenues available to him was the National Security Guard (NSG). 4 So he put up his name. I remember him telling me, “Bro, no way I can do staff posting, too boring.”’
Four months after the award, leadership changed at the unit and a new CO, Col. K.K. Mishra, replaced Col. Prakash.
‘The moment I met David, I knew he was a maverick,’ says Col. Mishra. ‘I was impressed by his energy and focus, but was also concerned, right from the start, that these high motivation levels should not lead him to harm. I always had this at the back of my mind. Always . I needed to make sure that I could harness that energy, but without endangering him and the other boys.’
Embracing the challenge of his new position near Mon district’s Tizit village, David set about cultivating new sources of intelligence in the ever-shifting landscape. His fears proved to be true—both the NSCN(K) and the ULFA(I) stepped up activities to recuperate and re-arm following the blistering Myanmar raid of 2015, and clearly had a point to prove. Challenged at nearly every step, they were increasingly desperate to score a major attack on the Army and other security forces deployed against them.
On 4 June 2017, David had picked up the buzz that a group of ULFA(I) terrorists had infiltrated from Myanmar, and were likely to move towards Assam with a large quantity of weapons and ammunition. The buzz was typically vague, with no actionable information. As he always did, David tried to build on the intelligence and flesh out an action plan.
On the evening of 6 June 2017, David was at his base, WhatsApping friends and family. He sent a message to his friend, Richa, in Shillong, telling her he would be back home in a week for a break. To his father, Khamzalam, he asked that he pray that the NSG plan worked out.
‘I told him, everything will work out,’ Khamzalam says. ‘You just focus on your work and stay alert.’
At 8.30 p.m., David’s phone buzzed. It was a local contact he had cultivated near the Assam border who was calling with information about the movement of suspected ULFA(I) terrorists in the hilly Lapa Lempong area of Mon. Unlike the many vague inputs that came in daily, this particular piece of intelligence was more specific than anything David had heard before. It not only specified the number of terrorists, but also where they could be intercepted and the direction they were heading in.
‘David had been doggedly pursuing that input for three days,’ says Col. Mishra. ‘It was clear to him that the terror cadres were attempting to cross into Assam. The exact time when they would cross Tizit was not known. That’s when he got that call, informing him that the terrorists had commandeered two autorickshaws and were moving towards Tizit to cross over to Lapa Lempong. He was sitting with Para officers. His men were already on standby when he got the call.’
David assembled two groups of men in two Gypsies, one with his own company and another with men from the 12 Para Special Forces. At 9.05 p.m., the two vehicles crept out of Tizit base and sped towards a suspension bridge near Lapa Lempong to establish a mobile check post (MCP). The function of the MCP was to intercept and challenge the two autorickshaws that were expected to pass that way on the Lapa Lempong-Lunglam-Oting road.
Three minutes after 10 p.m., with the MCP established and the men waiting, the two autorickshaws emerged through the darkness from Lapa Lempong village, moving in the direction of Oting. On being signalled to stop, the two autos swerved away and accelerated up a nearby hill, a highly suspicious action that confirmed, if nothing else, that those in the autos were up to no good. Given the intelligence, it was all that David needed to drop everything and give chase.
‘Move! Move! Move!’ David screamed, diving back into the front passenger seat of his Gypsy, AK-47 armed and ready, bursting out of the location in pursuit of the two autos up the winding hill road.
The second Gypsy with the Para unit followed 200 m behind. He knew he could have fired at the autos, but the smallest chance that those in the autos weren’t terrorists stopped him from doing so. Killing civilians accidentally would have destroyed over two years of painstaking work and the many hearts won. And as a non-Naga in Nagaland, he knew such an incident had the potential to spiral into a nightmare for the Army and the people. His weapon aimed and ready, David leaned forward in his seat, watching the two autos race through the darkness.
‘This is a v
ery narrow mountain road, so there’s no question of overtaking,’ says Col. Mishra. ‘They could not open fire either, because the last thing David would have wanted was a case of mistaken identity. So he kept pursuing the autos at a distance of 25 m. Then, at one of the blind turns up the hill, the trailing auto halted while the one ahead sped away. Through the darkness, David and his team saw at least three people jump out of the auto and run to the right, up the hill behind some rocks. And almost immediately, these men began firing at David’s Gypsy.’
Immediately jumping out of the moving vehicle from the left, David ordered the driver to duck and crawl out of the vehicle, screaming to the six soldiers in the passenger benches to get out and take cover behind the vehicle. Kneeling on the ground with the passenger door as a shield, David fired back at the three terrorists.
‘With fire coming from the darkness, David could have gone down the hill to protect himself, but he did not,’ says Col. Mishra. ‘He ordered his men to a safe spot behind the vehicle and away from the line of fire, while he stood at the door returning fire. It was a very fierce firefight.’
The second Gypsy, carrying the Para Special Forces men led by their commander, Capt. Nitesh Kumar, had pulled up seconds later straight in the line of fire, with bullets flying through the vehicle. The Para soldiers immediately emerged from their vehicle to join the firefight, but a hail of bullets hit three soldiers just as they jumped out of their Gypsy, critically injuring them. A fourth man, Paratrooper Manchu, crawled towards the three injured men in an attempt to pull them to safety.
David screamed again at the soldiers to get out of the vehicle and take cover as quickly as possible. As he did so, a bullet from one of the terrorists tore through the car door and went straight through David’s chest. The terrorists followed this quickly with a grenade hurled between the two Gypsies, the shrapnel hitting David in the head and grievously injuring Paratrooper Manchu in both the eyes and his shoulder. Blinded by the injuries, Paratrooper Manchu still pushed himself forward to pull his three injured comrades to safety behind the vehicle. Shaken by the head injury but standing his ground, David turned back to scream once again, telling the soldiers in both Gypsies not to emerge from behind the vehicles, and to stay away from the line of fire.
‘If David had not fired back at the terrorists and instructed his men to take cover, the entire party would have been eliminated in seconds,’ says Col. Mishra. ‘A grenade splinter hit his head, and it was followed by another bullet hitting him in the arm, but he remained standing and firing. He was bleeding out, but he kept firing at the terrorists.’
After minutes of non-stop firing, David realized the engagement was useless unless he got a clear shot of the terrorists. The three men on the hill had every advantage. They were standing on higher ground, had rocks to hide behind, and were raining their bullets down from three weapons, as against David’s solo counter-fire from below. Looking back at the three injured Para Special Forces men, David looked down at the wound in his chest. He knew the blood loss meant he might pass out at any moment, so if there was anything he could do, it needed to be right then.
‘David signalled to us to provide him covering fire, but we did not understand why,’ says a soldier from the second Gypsy.
As the soldiers emerged from their positions to fire back at the terrorists, David got on to his stomach and slowly crawled out from behind his Gypsy, and in the darkness, snaked his way, bleeding, towards the terrorists still firing from the hill. Reaching a spot 10 m from the terrorists, David then used the last of his energy to explode out from in front of the rocks and kill the three terrorists at point-blank range. Then, with a roar that echoed down the hill, he collapsed there, unconscious from blood loss.
‘The entire operation took just 5 minutes from start to finish,’ says one of the soldiers who provided covering fire to David as he crawled towards the terrorists for the final attack. ‘The entire party was saved by this act by David. Initially, it was only David who could fire, because there was nobody else in a position to fire back.’
At 11 p.m., Col. Mishra got a call informing him about the operation that had just taken place and that Maj. David had been injured in the chase.
‘David did the very best he could have in the circumstances. My priority at midnight was to send a backup party to the hill and bring down David and the other injured men.’
When the truck arrived at the encounter site, three men from David’s unit carried him back to the Gypsies, administering emergency aid. The young officer was unconscious, but he still had a pulse.
‘Initially, we were told that the first bullet on the chest is fatal, but after some time, we came to know that David had a pulse. But the damage was severe. It was futile,’ says Col. Mishra.
On the way down the hill in the truck, Maj. David succumbed to his three injuries.
His men, still on the hill, secured the position, confirming by dawn that the three men David had killed were indeed ULFA(I) terrorists. The terror group itself would confirm that their names were Bipul Asom, Santosh Asom and Phanindra Asom. The leader of the group was found to be a notorious cadre who was wanted for causing serial blasts in Assam on Republic Day six months earlier. The autorickshaw they were in carried a large quantity of bomb-making material and weapons, along with documents that indicated a widespread network of extortion. The men David had crawled bleeding towards, and eliminated, were part of the cutting edge of ULFA(I)’s terrorist operations.
At 5 a.m. the following morning, Col. Mishra made the dreaded phone call to David’s father in Shillong.
‘I woke up to the call telling me my son was no more,’ says Khamzalam. ‘He said, “Bahut sorry, sa’ab , but this is the news I have to bring to you.” What could I say? When a man does his work honestly to protect his country, this can happen.’
‘David may have been impulsive, but he took the correct decision, and acted in the best way he could to save his team and finish the operation. Even in his final mission, his act of total selflessness saved over a dozen men,’ says Col. Mishra, who would go on to recommend the young officer for a posthumous Kirti Chakra, the country’s second-highest peacetime gallantry award. ‘It was a very well-planned operation but it happened quite suddenly. There was no other way of doing it. Some people may say that chasing two autorickshaws in Gypsies and having a firefight like this within a space of 25 m seems more like a police operation than an Army one. But I visited the site and saw how things played out. There was no other way it could have been done.’
After the men under his charge had had a chance to say goodbye, David’s body was airlifted to Shillong the following morning. In a truck, accompanied by a full ceremonial guard, the flag-draped coffin would snake its way through Shillong’s roads to the Happy Valley area where his parents lived, where a wailing Mannuamniang, helped up by two relatives, would welcome her son home for the last time. Her husband, in contrast, would be unshakeably stoic, calm, even smiling, as friends, family and a stream of officers lined up to offer their condolences.
‘I was proud, but I also felt guilty when he died,’ says Khamzalam. ‘The Army was his duty and it was a dangerous life. It is my good fortune that God gave me a son for good work, and then God took him back. My son fought very bravely. If more men are like him, this country will have peace.’
‘My son has passed away, but I’m with my son always, and he is with me,’ says Mannuamniang. ‘I’m proud of my son. He died a hero.’
Holding herself together with enormous strength under the hot sun, David’s mother would take the microphone and tell the crowd, ‘I know it is quite warm today for all of you sitting outside like this. But for David’s sake and ours, I would request you all to bear it for a while since it is my son’s last journey.’
David’s sister, Melody, married to an Army officer and settled in Delhi, would be unable to arrive home in time for David’s last rites at the Assam Regimental Centre and his burial in the cemetery there. Posting a picture of him that day on Fa
cebook, she would write, ‘My hero. You made us proud. You are coming home with the highest honour, wrapped in the tricolour.’
A large number of friends, including those he had spoken to the previous night, would show up for his funeral. The roads leading up to Happy Valley would be lined with mourners that morning, with Armymen and friends taking the microphone to pay rich tributes to David for hours.
‘We miss him, but what can we do? He has gone for our country. Gave his life for India,’ says Khamzalam. ‘Rest in peace, David. I will also be gone some day. But going like this is very good. Such people are good. He is accepted by God. I am happy and peaceful in my mind. I don’t worry about his soul. I appreciate his bravery. And I am proud of the son God has given me, and then taken away from me. I don’t worry, I am happy. I would like to congratulate my son for completing his duty. I would like to think that God believed my son was too fine a person to be kept on this earth and therefore took him back.’
In Delhi, a group of David’s classmates from the management institute received the news with disbelief. They would spend an evening recounting their favourite memories of the young upstart from Manipur who wouldn’t sit down for a moment.
‘He’s generally unforgettable, but there’s one small thing I will remember him for, above all else,’ says his classmate Sagar Pande. ‘Some guys and I would get late getting back to the hostel and would miss dinner. David would always make sure to keep a few extra plates of food in his room. So after 10 p.m., when we returned, we would go straight to his room. And we never once asked him to do this for us. He just did it.’