The Brave: Param Vir Chakra Stories (19 page)

Sixty-five now, Sub Maj Bana Singh, PVC, who was born in Ranbir Singh Pora tehsil of Jammu and Kashmir on 6 January 1949 in a Sikh family, sits in his small house, amid emerald-like green wheat fields. He finishes his story with a sigh. ‘I was 19 when I joined the Jammu & Kashmir Light Infantry. I wouldn’t say what I did in Siachen was an act of bravery. I just fulfilled my responsibilities as a soldier. We succeeded. Had we not succeeded I would not be sitting here before you alive, ‘ he says.

A dark, slightly portly Sikh gentlemen in a light-coloured suit and turban watches keenly as the marching contingent of the passing-out parade stomps across the Bana Singh Parade Ground of the JAK LI Regimental Centre at Rangreth. He smiles when the Bana Singh Medal is announced for the recruit with the best drill and a slim, young, sprightly boy marches up smartly to collect it. Among the young soldiers is Rajinder Singh, who his father Bana Singh has come to watch. Two decades after Bana performed an act of unmatched heroism on the freezing heights of Siachen, his 18-year-old son joined 8 JAK LI, the regiment Bana began his career in.

Parade over, the proud father smiles to himself and gets up to join the other parents for tea. He will return to his village and a retired life. A baton has been passed on.

This story is based on conversations with Sub Maj (Retd) Bana Singh

The time is 7 p. m. Dusk has fallen over north Jaffna, Sri Lanka. The sky is dark with rain clouds when the men of Alpha Company, 8 Mahar, start marching towards Kantharodai, ready to fire the self-loading rifles in their hands. They are deployed at Uduvil Girls College, and are now out on patrol since information has come that a consignment of arms and ammunition is being unloaded at the house of the headman of Kantharodai village, a man called Dharmalingam. The patrol of10 soldiers is being led by Captain D. R. Sharma, A Company’s second-in-command.

Kantharodai is a small village that comprises a few huts surrounded by dense coconut groves. The soldiers walk as quietly as they can, finding their way in the darkness. The area around them is swampy and filled with coconut trees and deep undergrowth; there are no street lights and they have been told not to use any lights as they will draw attention to them. As they trudge along, Sharma has this nagging feeling that they are being watched by LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam).

A few single-storied houses nestle among the clusters of trees. Sharma reports to his company commander Major Ramaswamy Parameswaran—or Parry sahab, as his troops affectionately call him—that they have been fired at by the LTTE militants from a temple and the militant strength appears to be much larger than anticipated. Parry has been posted to 8 Mahar for less than two months. He has been picked since he is a Tamilian and can speak the local language. Also officiating as the battalion quarter master after the battalion lost Capt. Sunil Chandra in an earlier operation, he is raring to come to the aid of his men. He has been functioning as quarter master during the day, looking after rations and stores, and taking on the mantle of A Company commander at night. He quickly puts together another patrol of 20 jawans and junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) Sampat Sable and joins up with the first patrol.

It is around midnight when the combined patrol of30 soldiers starts moving towards Kantharodai. It has begun to rain and the soldiers cover the mouths of their guns with polythene sheets. Some of them have ponchos but since they are inconvenient to wear, most prefer to get wet in the slow-falling rain.

They keep walking in a column in the pitch dark, cautiously covering 4. 5 km while making sure that the coconut groves and swamp around the road are free of LTTE. Around 1. 30 a. m., the patrol reaches Dharmalingam’s house. It is set in an acre-plus compound and has a pond, coconut trees and even a garden. Everyone appears to be sleeping since the house is in darkness. The weather has worsened. The rain is now coming down in a thick downpour and the night sky is streaked with flashes of lightning and the sound of thunder. The men are soaking wet by now, water is seeping out of their heavy wood-soled DMS boots that have become bulky with moisture.

They surround the house and squat about 800 m from it in groups of 10. No movement is detected, but they see an old truck parked nearby, next to what appears to be a garage. This lends credibility to the reports of the weapon consignment being unloaded there. Not risking attacking in the dark, the men wait for dawn. They squat in the grass even as the rain falls and are told not to move, cough or get up even to relieve themselves.

Around 5. 30 a. m., the family’s dogs start barking and Parry decides to search the house. While the rest of the soldiers close in, he, Sharma and radio operator Dilip Maske go in and bring out Dharmalingam and his family. But even a thorough search yields nothing suspicious and it is decided that the patrol will return to headquarters. The officers shelter in a deserted house and discuss the route they should take to go back, deciding on the tarred Kantharodai-Uduvil road again since they want to avoid the waterlogged marshy terrain where LTTE ambushes are expected.

Unfortunately for them, the road goes past a pond with three temples around it, where LTTE militants have sought shelter. Later, much later, it is surmised that since Maratha Light Infantry were operating west of the 8 Mahar area, the LTTE cadre that Parry and his men run into may have accidentally drifted on to the path of this returning patrol. Now, however, the soldiers do not know all this or even that they have been spotted by LTTE, who are watching them silently, waiting for a chance to attack.

It is 6. 30 a. m. when the tired, rain-soaked and sleep-deprived soldiers are passing the pond. A burst of heavy machine gunfire (HMG) hits Sepoy Jeevan Athawale. Sepoy Jagan Lal, who is behind him, shoots and kills one militant but is caught in a burst of light machine gunfire (LMG). At this moment, the militants open fire from all three temples, scattering the entire patrol.

‘We were walking on the road, spread out over 300 meters. Sampat Sahab was leading with 10 jawans; he was followed by Capt. Sharma Sahab with 10 jawans and Parry Sahab was bringing up the rear with 10 jawans. Just then the HMG fire came and hit two of our men,’ says Subedar (Retd. ) Dilip Maske, who retired as a JCO and now works as assistant manager with a security firm in Aurangabad. The two soldiers responsible for the LMG are badly injured in the legs. They fall and their LMG drops on the road. The soldiers walking in front also get pinned down because the fire starts coming from all directions and suddenly the air is full of deadly flying bullets.

The soldiers drop to the ground and Parry orders them to take immediate cover in the forest on the other side of the road. Picking up the dropped LMG, the men crawl into the thick undergrowth, taking their injured comrades along. Both are bleeding profusely from the bone-shattering shots. The soldiers go about 5 m into the forest and take cover in a thicket of coconut trees. From there, they try to return the fire, but it is a futile exercise since the militants cannot be seen. Parry and Sharma decide that former will move in from the east and the latter from the west and north.

Capt. Sharma and Sepoy Jarnail Singh pick up their rocket launcher and walk into the pond since they need open space to use it. Standing in the water, they direct a few bursts at the temple from where the most fire is coming; they can’t do much since the HMG fire keeps coming and have to return looking for cover. During this exercise, Jarnail is hit by an LMG burst on his left leg that cripples him, but he drags himselfinto an under-construction house. Sharma’s team decides to take shelter there. There are two more houses in the area and the soldiers have unknowingly walked into an ambush. Naik Appanna Sarje comes out of the house to fire and almost walks into two militants. He kills one but the other manages to escape. As he tries to fire at the fleeing militant, he is shot and falls down, mortally wounded. Capt. Sharma asks Jarnail to fire a rocket at the house sheltering the LTTE militants, but the round misfires. The aerial of the radio set with them breaks and they are not able to make any transmissions either. Just then, they spot two militants looking in through the window, and before they can react, the militants lob a grenade inside. Sharma, who is trying to get through to the battalion HQ by hooking his set to a radio aerial in the house, miraculously gets through. He shouts at Jarnail to pick up the grenade and throw it out of the window, but even as the injured Jarnail bends to do so, the grenade bursts and the flying shards slash into him. Sharma escapes unhurt and starts lobbing grenades at the militants. Two of them fall and the soldiers watch from inside the house as their bodies are dragged away by their compatriots.

The soldiers face heavy firing from all directions. They have inadvertently walked into an LTTE hideout. The militants are holed up in spaces under the ceiling and even on top of the coconut trees. ‘We did not know much about hideouts in those days and didn’t realize that the rebels were hiding all around us. Capt. Sharma and Sampat Sahab, along with their columns, were caught in the ambush. There were immediate casualties,’ remembers Maske. Radio operator Vidyasagar Dongre and Ramesh Athawale are injured in the fire; Rajan, who is trying to return the attack with mortar fire is hit by a burst that kills him on the spot. Ganesh Kohle, who is handling the LMG, is also shot dead. LTTE are using AK-47s, grenades, explosives and the deadly HMGs that inflict the maximum damage. They have even mined the area, which restricts the movement of the soldiers, who were completely at a disadvantage.

Parry sees the firing from his location and decides to step in to save the men. ‘Sahab told us that our soldiers had walked into an ambush and we would go from behind and do a counter-ambush so that our men could be rescued,’ recounts Maske.

Taking 10 men with him, Parry moves forward. Sepoy Raj Kumar Sharma and Naik Pandurang Dhoble are with him but the group breaks up under the intense fire coming at them. Parry does not lose his cool even for a moment. He fixes the LMG and tells Raj Kumar to fire at the militants. He decides that the rest shall move forward under cover of that fire. Raj Kumar has just started firing when an AK-47 burst from a treetop hits him, and he falls. The soldiers are pinned down by the incessant fire.

Parry refuses to be cowed down and with absolutely no concern for his own safety, drops on his stomach and crawls forward through the coconut grove where many of the trees have been chopped down to about five feet. Taking cover behind a tree stump, Parry fires the LMG in the direction of the ambush. He startles the LTTE militants, who realize they have been surrounded.

Just then an HMG burst from a sniper, sitting atop of a coconut tree, catches Parry on his left wrist, smashing the bone to bits and nearly severing his hand. The impact is so high that it takes off his watch, which falls some distance away. Even as his men watch, Parry charges at the militant closest to him, completely disregarding his grievous injury. He snatches the man’s weapon and shoots him, shouting at his men to follow.

Just then, another HMG burst hits him in the chest. In his pocket he has a Mini Clear pistol and rounds he has planned to use to send a success signal. They burst and the brave officer collapses, falling on his face. When his body is recovered by Capt. Sharma almost an hour later, his watch is found lying near him. It has stopped at 8. 10 a. m. ‘I was just three metres behind him,’ says Maske. However, the fire is so intense that for a long time the soldiers are not able to even reach his body.

Though shocked by the loss of their brave commander, the six jawans are inspired by his sacrifice and continue to fight back. They can see the militants scattering in panic. ‘They were young boys and girls in lungis (sarongs) and T-shirts. Most of them were carrying AK-47s though they did not have either helmets or slippers on their feet,’ remembers Maske. The rebels start jumping out of their hideouts and running away while still firing at the soldiers.

The battalion has, meanwhile, sent reinforcements. Capt. T. C. Bhattacharya and 20 other ranks reach the location and start firing at the three temples. Bhattacharya enters the first temple and manages to catch a militant. It is a bold action that unnerves the other rebels and sends them fleeing. Bhattacharya succeeds in extracting information from his prisoner about a hideout from where three AK-47s, two rocket launchers, 200 booster charges and 100 kg ofexplosives are recovered. A team of1 Maratha Light Infantry, led by Major Devendra Brar, also arrives. This party of 25 soldiers helps Maske and Ankush Waghmare move forward and retrieve Parry’s body. It is brought to an empty house where Raj Kumar is given first aid. Slowly the firing stops.

Six militants are killed in the attack and an unknown number wounded. 8 Mahar loses Parry, Naik Appana Sarje, Rajan Lal and Milind Kohle, while nine others are wounded.

On 25 November, Parry’s body is flown to Chennai and handed over to his kin. The three martyred soldiers are cremated with full military honours at Uduvil.

For his gallant act of bravery, exemplary leadership and command, Maj Ramaswamy Parameswaran is awarded posthumously the nation’s highest gallantry award, the Param Vir Chakra. His saga of valour and selfless sacrifice will continue to inspire new generations of Mahar soldiers.

‘The casualties would have been much higher had Parry Sahab not decided on going for a counter-ambush, ‘ says Maske. ‘He lost his life, but saved so many others.’