by Shiv Aroor
‘Any average guy would have died on the spot, or wouldn’t have been able to stay awake,’ says Tushar. ‘Pawan wanted to continue even in that state, but his body wasn’t allowing it. I could see it was very difficult for him to realize he could not continue the fight, even as he oozed blood.’
An ambulance was summoned to take Capt. Pawan to the 92 Base Hospital a few kilometres away in Srinagar city. When he was stretchered off the encounter site, he was still conscious, still stammering to his Team Leader.
‘Chaloo kar do, Sir, bande andar hain. Ek-do aur hain andar. Pehla banda iss side par hai aur do bande andar nikal gaye hain (Start the operation, Sir. There are a couple more inside. The first is on this side and two more have escaped within),’ Capt. Pawan said before being loaded into the ambulance and driven away.
‘One bullet wouldn’t have pulled him down. Even two or three rounds wouldn’t have stopped him. Unfortunately, one of those bullets ripped off a part of his heart. It was a very bad hit. If it hadn’t hit his heart, he would have continued fighting,’ says Tushar. ‘He was unbelievably strong.’
An hour later, just before dawn on 21 February, Capt. Pawan, twenty-three years old, succumbed to his injuries at the Srinagar base hospital.
Back in Pampore, the foothold he provided into the besieged building would be crucial to an operation that stretched over 48 hours. A terrible reminder of the deadly difficulty of the operation would come the following day, when two more Special Forces men—Capt. Tushar Mahajan and Lance Naik Om Prakash from the 9 Para Special Forces unit—would lose their lives in gun battles within the shattered, blazing building. In the days that followed, questions would explode over whether tactics had failed, or whether the men had taken unnecessary risks in their pursuit of the terrorists. But leaders in the unit would vouch for their men—they had been in the best possible position to take the decisions they did. And what Capt. Pawan had done was, quite literally, open the door to the end of the operation.
‘Traditionally, building interventions are done in the daytime. In Pawan’s case, they stormed the building at 2 a.m.,’ says Tushar. ‘He was extremely calm and confident. Try and picture operating in pitch-black darkness.’
The second thing Capt. Pawan had done was cross what is known as the ‘fatal funnel’. In close quarter combat, the fatal funnel is described as the cone-shaped path leading from the entry where the assaulter (Capt. Pawan) is most vulnerable to the defenders (the terrorists) inside the room. Once an assaulter enters, defenders inside the room do everything they can to keep the assaulter inside the fatal funnel, where bullets are most likely to find him. It was in the fatal funnel that Capt. Pawan had killed the first terrorist. And it was here that bullets had found him.
‘Pawan had conquered the fatal funnel with his life,’ says Tushar. ‘The first door you enter leaves you with the maximum probability of being hit. After that, you are inside. The terrorists know it. You know it. Earlier, there was concrete between you. Now there’s nothing. They no longer have an advantage. It’s only a matter of time.’
‘We’ve lost Pawan,’ a voice at the other end of the line from Srinagar said. Maj. Tushar had been ready for the news, but somewhere, he had still believed the young officer would pull through. It was then that Maj. Tushar was informed that Capt. Pawan had been shot through the heart. Anything less, and he would have survived.
‘I spent that night in disbelief, more than anything else,’ Tushar says. ‘It wasn’t believable that Pawan was gone. He was a supremely strong, intelligent soldier. He had gone through heavy stone pelting and calmly walked away. He took a leadership call to break down a door, knowing those first bullets could have his name on them. He held his nerve no matter what. And he was an incredibly disciplined fighter.’
Tomar refers to how Capt. Pawan unfailingly carried two weapons into operation—his M4A1 carbine, of course, but always backed up by a Beretta pistol.
‘This is basic protocol for us in the Special Forces, but people tend to forget during operations,’ says Tushar. ‘Pawan also made it a point to keep two ammunition magazines strapped together. And he always changed magazines before the first one was empty. These are basic techniques, but people forget. Pawan didn’t. He never made those mistakes.’
Nearly 48 hours after the stand-off began, the operation was finally brought to a close on 22 February with the confirmed killing of all three Pakistani terrorists. Intelligence agencies would later reveal that the three men likely infiltrated weeks before across the LoC in Handwara in north Kashmir, before slipping into the Valley along the Jhelum.
On 22 February, wreaths would be laid on a wooden casket containing Capt. Pawan’s body at the Army’s Badami Bagh Cantonment in Srinagar. Maj. Tushar and the other men from 10 Para Special Forces would be unable to attend, because they were still deployed at the Pampore encounter site.
With the Jat quota agitations still raging across Haryana, including in areas surrounding Capt. Pawan’s native Jind district, it became clear to the Army that transporting the young officer’s remains by road from anywhere could meet with roadblocks and unexpected trouble. In a rare appeal, the Army officially called for the people of Haryana to extend their full support in ensuring that the body of the soldier could be sent back to his village. To play it safe, however, the casket containing Capt. Pawan’s body was flown from Srinagar to Pathankot in an Army Dhruv helicopter. At the base, the Army held another farewell ceremony for the young officer. From Pathankot, the helicopter airlifted the casket straight to his native Badhana village in Jind. From the air, the crew of that helicopter would have glimpsed any crowds that had gathered.
By this time, Capt. Pawan’s Facebook post from two days earlier had been discovered by journalists, his words amplifying the irony of the situation to the fullest. On social media, he may have playfully dismissed the agitation by members of his community. His antipathy towards the mobilization actually ran deeper.
‘He loved his iPhone and MacBook. Remember how young he was,’ says Tushar. ‘These gadgets were his steady connection to the world. He wasn’t just active on social media, but was also very vocal about his views. He would openly say Haryanvis don’t require reservations, and that this was all politics. He hailed the people of Haryana as brave, strong, as winners in sports arenas and beyond. He was like, “Yeh sab bakwaas hai, Sir (This is all rubbish, Sir).”
‘I couldn’t reach [Jind] for the last rites because of operational duties. Most of our unit did go from wherever they were. Our CO was there. The Jat agitation was quite bad, and tempers were on edge. But news had also spread by this time about Pawan, especially in and around Jind. Many of the road blockades simply disappeared when they heard about Pawan. I hear there was a 3-km long line of people leading into his village, wailing and crying. In Haryana, people do care about their soldiers. Crowds arrived from all over for the funeral in his village.’
As deafening chants of ‘Pawan Kumar amar rahe (Long live Pawan Kumar)’ broke through the sounds of mourning, marigold petals came showering down as the casket was carried by four Special Forces men into the forecourt of the officer’s small home. Stoic and solemn amid the wailing and the slogans, Capt. Pawan’s father knelt next to the casket, while relatives pulled the cover off.
Inside, wrapped in white, was Rajbir Singh’s only child. His eyes were closed and his face wore a gentle calm. His dishevelled hair and beard were hidden by the folds of the cloth that now draped him. His mother would be brought out of the house to see him one last time. Inconsolable and reluctant, she would touch Pawan’s cheek before collapsing near the casket.
‘I had one child. I gave him to the Army. To the nation. No father could be prouder,’ Rajbir Singh would tell the journalists who waited to hear from Capt. Pawan’s father. The comment, made with unusual composure, would stun the country and echo across the media through that day.
‘He was an only child. He spoke to his parents once every few days. He knew they worried about him, but they would never let
him know that,’ Tushar says. ‘He always wanted to be in the Army, but wasn’t sure which area. He went through NDA and IMA. Initially, he wanted to join the Ordnance Corps. Then he decided to join the Infantry. One of his instructors was from the Dogra regiment, so he was commissioned into 7 Dogra in December 2013. Later, he learnt about the Special Forces.’
Unable to extricate himself from operations at Pampore and another anti-terror operation a few days later in Pulwama, Maj. Tushar would finally get the time to visit Jind on 4 March, two weeks after Capt. Pawan’s death.
‘I have never seen a braver family. Their pride is not an act. His father isn’t lying about the pride he feels,’ says Tushar. ‘Their sorrow runs perfectly parallel to how proud they are of their son’s sacrifice. It is hard to describe.’
‘We had many plans for Pawan,’ says his father. ‘He was in love with a girl whom we had met and liked. We were looking at a possible marriage in 2017. Had Pawan been around, I would have perhaps become a grandfather by now. Par zindagi ki raftaar mein sab sapne peeche reh gaye (But the pace of life overtook all our dreams). He had plans for us too. Pawan would often say that we will sell off the Jind house and buy one in Panchkula. That’s a far better place, he would say. Hum baap–beta ne bahut planning ki thi. Par kismet ne apni planning ki thi (We father–son had planned a lot of things. But destiny had its own plans).’
Six months after his death, a day before the Independence Day in 2016, the government announced that Capt. Pawan would be decorated with the Shaurya Chakra by the Indian President. Capt. Tushar and Lance Naik Om Prakash too were decorated with the Shaurya Chakra for their sacrifice.
Capt. Pawan’s parents speak about him every day, to each other and to anyone who visits them.
‘We will miss him till our deaths,’ says his father. ‘He was our only child. We rummage through old photo albums to revisit the happier times of our lives. We have a cupboard in the house and all of Pawan’s stuff is in it. His Shaurya Chakra, his uniform and his boots—everything. Sometimes we just take his clothes out of the cupboard and hold them.’
A year into the Army, Capt. Pawan had chosen to use his first spell of leave not to go home, but to bike up on his Bullet motorcycle to Khardung La in Ladakh, the world’s highest motorable pass.
Tushar, now second-in-command of the 10 Para Special Forces, says he will never forget the young commando, but believes he will hang on to one story more than any other to remember Capt. Pawan. It was late one night in December 2015, in a snow-blown patch of wilderness south of Srinagar.
‘We had been deployed there for an operation. But the intelligence turned out to be faulty, so there was no encounter and no sign of any terrorists,’ says Tushar. ‘The weather was very bad, and it was snowing very heavily. My legs were nearly frozen and I suggested we return to base. But Pawan had a smile on his face. He said, “Sir, thodi der baithte hain, aayenge aayenge (Sir, let’s sit here a while, they’ll come).” He persuaded me to sit there the whole night in the snow and brutal cold. My brain knew that no terrorists would come. But Pawan insisted we wait. I don’t think he expected any terrorists either. I think he just liked being out there.’
7
‘I Rust when I Rest’
Major Satish Dahiya
Jaipur
14 February 2017
‘Aap ghar se bahar mat jana, aaj kucch aane wala hai (Don’t leave home, something is going to arrive today).’
Sujata Chowdhry wondered for a moment why her husband was speaking in an unusually hushed voice. He was calling from the headquarters of his Army counter-insurgency unit in north Kashmir’s Kupwara, where voices were kept low as a rule. But it was clear he was making an extra effort to be discreet.
Sujata understood. Maybe Maj. Satish Dahiya’s men were within earshot and he was embarrassed to be speaking to his wife on Valentine’s Day. Yes, that must be it.
She had taunted him the day before, after he had had a package of children’s towels delivered to their home in Jaipur for Priyasha, their daughter who would turn two in a few months. The towels were better suited for an infant, but Sujata had smiled and kept them, despite her husband’s repeated pleas that she have them exchanged. Later that night, she sent him a message on WhatsApp: ‘You know what day it is tomorrow? You’ve sent presents for your daughter. What about your wife?’
Sujata didn’t receive a reply that night, but was woken early the next morning by her husband’s hushed instructions not to leave home.
‘After that, he disconnected the phone,’ says Sujata. ‘I began the day, got our daughter ready for school, dropped her off and returned home to get ready for the day. That’s when Satish called again, asking where I was. He again asked me to stay home and to expect a parcel at noon. Like his first call in the morning, he talked for barely 30 seconds before hanging up. He kept saying, ‘Bahar hoon kaam pe (I’m out on duty).’
Shortly before noon, Sujata drove to Priyasha’s nursery school near their home. On their way back, Maj. Satish called for the third time.
‘He asked me why I’d left the house, and what if the parcel arrived while I was gone,’ says Sujata. ‘After reminding him that there was nobody else to collect our child from school, I teased him, saying I hoped the parcel was in fact for me, and not for someone else. Satish was anxious but taunted me back, saying it looked like he would be doing nothing else that day but coordinating this parcel business. He hung up again quickly.’
After Priyasha had been fed and put down for an afternoon nap, Sujata settled down to wait for the parcel, half expecting her husband to call back every hour for updates.
But Maj. Satish would call next only at 5.22 p.m. This time, it wasn’t from his own mobile phone, but a number she recognized as being from his unit. And this time, he didn’t ask about the parcel. He quickly informed her that he was leaving for an operation, before hanging up abruptly.
This wasn’t unusual. Maj. Satish was an officer with the RR, the chief counter-insurgency and anti-terror force in Jammu and Kashmir. The 30th Battalion of the RR, which the thirty-two-year-old officer was a part of, operated in Handwara, one of the most militant-infested zones near the LoC in north Kashmir. This was a restive militancy hotspot that was regularly fed by a stream of Pakistan-trained terrorist infiltrators who stole across the frontier fence to launch attacks. Far from unusual, dropping everything to dash to an operation was, in fact, part of the day’s work for the RR. But it had taken Sujata a while to get used to it.
Maj. Satish was already on the road when he had called Sujata. He was headed with his company of soldiers to a tiny village called Hajin Kralgund, not far from Handwara town and only a few kilometres from a vast swathe of some of the thickest forests in Kashmir, west of the Jhelum. The officer had barely been able to call his wife as he and his men rumbled down the highway towards their destination.
For the previous five hours, from his position on the fringes of Kupwara, about 40 km away from the battalion headquarters, Maj. Satish had been in constant touch with Col. Rajiv Saharan, the CO of 30 RR.
‘Satish was absolutely clear when he called me,’ says Col. Rajiv. ‘He had cultivated a very good source in the local community since he had come to us in 2015. That source turned out to be highly reliable and had tremendous faith in Satish. Generally, people are not open to providing information because they fear that sooner or later, their identity will be revealed and it will be game over for them at the hands of the terrorists. But this particular source had tremendous faith in Satish and said, “Sahab, main aapke liye karoonga (I will do it for you)”. Finding such a source is difficult and dangerous. We have a large number of sources that are not reliable because they might be double agents. But Satish had 100 per cent faith in this guy. On 14 February, the source had confirmed to Satish the whereabouts of certain hardcore Pakistani terrorists whom we, along with several other units, had been hunting for weeks, but without success. Finally, there was specific information about their location. And there was no doubt in Sati
sh’s mind that it was reliable information about the group’s movements and location.’
The group, as it turned out, was from one of the most specialized terrorist units that Pakistan had sent into India that year—the so-called ‘Afzal Guru Squad’ of the JeM. These weren’t ragtag infiltrators, but men with fearsome commando-style training that armed them with both physical endurance and the sort of tactical combat training required to engage ably with any military force hunting them. Making the fight even more complicated, the terror squad was believed to be using YSMS—a crafty trick in which smartphones were paired with high frequency radio sets to send out SMS text messages that were nearly impossible to intercept. Terror groups had begun using this technology in early 2015, but there was still no credible way of tapping these conversations.
These were men, in other words, who could put up a real fight in total stealth. If no terrorists were to be taken lightly, the men of the Afzal Guru Squad were to be taken least lightly of all. And it was a group of these men that Maj. Satish’s source confirmed was hiding in Hajin Kralgund.
‘Satish vouched for the tip-off, and requested permission to proceed towards Hajin Kralgund,’ says Col. Rajiv. ‘The input was very specific. Three to four terrorists were hiding in two separate houses, one on the fringe of the village and the other somewhere in the centre.’
With Maj. Satish and his men on the way, Col. Rajiv phoned Ghulam Jeelani, Handwara’s Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), an officer well-regarded for his commitment to going after terrorists. Militants had flung a grenade at Jeelani’s Srinagar home late at night only two months earlier, though neither he nor his family were at home at the time.