Indian Special Forces (archived)

[Vinod DX9]

SRG
Special Rangers Group

 

[Indian Sniper.001]

Special protection Group personnel.

 

[abingdonboy]

View attachment 23097
SRG
Special Rangers Group

SRG have clearly been training with SPG, they now use the same collapsed Kevlar shield and carry their main weapons in the “conventional” way (muzzle pointing down)

 

[COLDHEARTED AVIATOR]

This crap again? The Army leadership was part of the decision to deployment NSG. Primary reason was they were wary of a hostage rescue situation involving the 10,000 people present at the base including families and foreign officers.

What about Pathankot was a failure? All objectives were achieved and no NSG Operators were killed expect for a bomb tech who was injured after ops were completed from
A booby trapped body.


Funny how this article and the ex IA guy totally omits examples such as Pampore which cost the lives of numerous PARA (SF) guys including their team leader and that was a mission FAR smaller and less complex Than Pathankot.


Thanks to retards in media and some ex-IA officers a CT success like Pathankot has been painted as an operational failure.

It’s particularly despicable that these army guys have also been so dismissive and critical of the efforts of the Garuds who by all accounts did an excellent job.

This General Katoch is not a reliable source.He contradicts himself many times.

Having a difference of opinion is good actually but contradicting statements and unnecesary comparisons with US SF and putting our own SF down and not realising what role US has in the world and then having inferiority complex coz our SF are not doing the same role is some of his speciality.

Our military structure and geographcal location plus our national policy of being a peaceful country should be considered before talking about SF.

Doing everything US ishhtyle is fanboy stuff.

 

[12arya]

The minute who ever counters them they give a title saying He is RSS sympathiser Modi bhakt North indian Hindi lover and Upper Cast brahmin all non sense .. The biggest issue is the language these SL pigs using the tamil language as advantage creating lots of shit and spreading in FB and other social media . Surprise none of these assholes are from india but they put post saying i reject india because i am tamil and when i check their profiles all are from canada australia france and belgium these refugee pigs today are trying to light the tamil fire in TN and start the same fucking civil war which they did in Sri lanka and made them refugees and run away .. I am really worried with the way its spreading like Wild fire i can see few educated morons who are working in IT sector in chennai speaking this language and i cant imagine whats the situation in deep down south ..

Someone has to look into these issues before things turn ugly ..

yes, it goes on even now. my sis in law, a kannadiga, works in IT field and she recently told me how this new tamil IT guy was caught watching Lankan propoganda crap during work hour at Wipro! she told me abt the superiority complex these guys suffers from wen compared to us "loser indians". im pretty hopeful not all tamilians r like that. but i feel tamilians from childhood r indoctrinated into believing that they r some superior race and hence deserve a seperate nation! recently lefty nut kamal hassan said, its time for all dravidians to unite against aryan atrocities wen genome has already discredited aryan invasion theory. he knows that saying such stuff will fire up the tamils.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com...ty-kamal-haasan-says/articleshow/62553177.cms

i feel rest of the south is patriotic and r nationalists.

 

[12arya]

JUNG HAI HUMRI AATANKWAD SEEEEEEE

im scarred for life what did i just watched?

 

[Darth Malgus]

yes, it goes on even now. my sis in law, a kannadiga, works in IT field and she recently told me how this new tamil IT guy was caught watching Lankan propoganda crap during work hour at Wipro! she told me abt the superiority complex these guys suffers from wen compared to us "loser indians". im pretty hopeful not all tamilians r like that. but i feel tamilians from childhood r indoctrinated into believing that they r some superior race and hence deserve a seperate nation! recently lefty nut kamal hassan said, its time for all dravidians to unite against aryan atrocities wen genome has already discredited aryan invasion theory. he knows that saying such stuff will fire up the tamils.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com...ty-kamal-haasan-says/articleshow/62553177.cms

i feel rest of the south is patriotic and r nationalists.

Unfortunately true, I have seen this even in my office, the guy is a Tamil Christian. The guy had so much hatred towards Hindi and his contempt towards Hindus was also obvious. Its as if certain "communities" are fuelling this divide.

 

[12arya]

Unfortunately true, I have seen this even in my office, the guy is a Tamil Christian. The guy had so much hatred towards Hindi and his contempt towards Hindus was also obvious. Its as if certain "communities" are fuelling this divide.

church is heavily investing in most southern states. but as usual, tamil converts in their usual extremist style take evrything to crazy level of hindu phobia. former tamil cm karunanidhi went ahead and asked how monkeys built bridges(ramsetu)? did rama knew engineering? and such :blah: only kerala commies can match tamil converts in hindu phobia!

i don't undertand the language hate at all. in my family all of us use multiple languages. all of us understand hindi very well. my father speaks fluent hindi as well as marathi. me my brother and sis in law(her family) all can manage hindi quite well. language is for communication and thats wat these brainwashed morons forgets.

 

[S.Balaji]

yes, it goes on even now. my sis in law, a kannadiga, works in IT field and she recently told me how this new tamil IT guy was caught watching Lankan propoganda crap during work hour at Wipro! she told me abt the superiority complex these guys suffers from wen compared to us "loser indians". im pretty hopeful not all tamilians r like that. but i feel tamilians from childhood r indoctrinated into believing that they r some superior race and hence deserve a seperate nation! recently lefty nut kamal hassan said, its time for all dravidians to unite against aryan atrocities wen genome has already discredited aryan invasion theory. he knows that saying such stuff will fire up the tamils.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com...ty-kamal-haasan-says/articleshow/62553177.cms

i feel rest of the south is patriotic and r nationalists.

There will always be fringe elements in any society .... there will always be extremist, pacifist, idealist members/organisation in any society.... The extremists elements & their thoughts are at best will be and always be in the fringes with some political patronage and we cant wish them away...and our "breaking news" hyper media is always their best friend ...in our country most traditional political leaders have lost moral grounds to seek votes on development plank due to their unfettered corruption and dynasty politics...sadly for them to remain relevant currently anti-nationalistic ideas seems to be in fashion, to peddle their wares to get votes with connivance of MSM.....

Am from TN and even during the last stages of Final Eelam war (when prabakaran was killed) some parties including a major mainstream Dravidian party (and not to forget their stooges the MSM) egged-on the people to vote for them on pro-LTTE plank and they spectacularly lost and Jayalalitha who was anti-LTTE won and went on to beat anti-incumbency and won for the 2nd term.

Southern states are aloof but tolerate these shenanigans of fringe elements and go about their jobs...when national anthem was mandated to be played in cinemas every one appreciated and welcomed it as a way of inculcating patriotism (except MSM Hindu which i stopped reading a long time ago) and still continue to do so. The State Cinemas association even after Supreme court ruling making the act voluntary have decided to continue playing the anthem in all theaters...

Deep down south in TN there are villages and towns which send their sons to the army generation after generation and the sense of pride is very high.. one cant forget the exploits of famed Madras Regiment in Siachen..

Tamilians (as any other race in heterogeneous Bharat) are very very proud of their culture, way of life and take offence to any slight... the recent protest against the Supreme Court Jallikattu ban (Jallikattu is the world famous month long bull run spectacle during the harvest festival celebration in January to commemorate the virility of bulls used in ploughing land) where entire Chennai & TN came to a stand still is one example. Fringe elements infiltrated the student protests and started anti-nationalistic agenda and police showed them their place after the legal hurdles were cleared (you would have seen lath icharge visuals on media last Jan).... Center & State should be vigilant against these foreign NGOs trying to impose their animal rights templates in our culture through bans in the guise of animal/human rights through pliable liberal courts....trying to stop Jallikattu in TN and Kambala race in Karnataka. The current GOI has done a pretty good job in muzzling these NGOs.

Rest assured when shit hits the fan you can count Aruval (a type of Bill hook present in most household of rural TN) draw blood for our tricolor in equal vigour as a kukri.

"Indoctrination of Dravidian culture from childhood & race superiority"- i have not heard of such a thing all my life being taught to kids (probably some political stage speech tag line famous some decades ago not now). Only indoctrination the kids suffer from is bloody "study, study, study".

However as some one rightly pointed out some fringe sections of minorities of India (definitely NOT all) vow allegiance to Vatican and Mecca and not to Delhi.

Regret to digress from the topic of this thread.

 

[12arya]

There will always be fringe elements in any society .... there will always be extremist, pacifist, idealist members/organisation in any society.... The extremists elements & their thoughts are at best will be and always be in the fringes with some political patronage and we cant wish them away...and our "breaking news" hyper media is always their best friend ...in our country most traditional political leaders have lost moral grounds to seek votes on development plank due to their unfettered corruption and dynasty politics...sadly for them to remain relevant currently anti-nationalistic ideas seems to be in fashion, to peddle their wares to get votes with connivance of MSM.....

Am from TN and even during the last stages of Final Eelam war (when prabakaran was killed) some parties including a major mainstream Dravidian party (and not to forget their stooges the MSM) egged-on the people to vote for them on pro-LTTE plank and they spectacularly lost and Jayalalitha who was anti-LTTE won and went on to beat anti-incumbency and won for the 2nd term.

Southern states are aloof but tolerate these shenanigans of fringe elements and go about their jobs...when national anthem was mandated to be played in cinemas every one appreciated and welcomed it as a way of inculcating patriotism (except MSM Hindu which i stopped reading a long time ago) and still continue to do so. The State Cinemas association even after Supreme court ruling making the act voluntary have decided to continue playing the anthem in all theaters...

Deep down south in TN there are villages and towns which send their sons to the army generation after generation and the sense of pride is very high.. one cant forget the exploits of famed Madras Regiment in Siachen..

Tamilians (as any other race in heterogeneous Bharat) are very very proud of their culture, way of life and take offence to any slight... the recent protest against the Supreme Court Jallikattu ban (Jallikattu is the world famous month long bull run spectacle during the harvest festival celebration in January to commemorate the virility of bulls used in ploughing land) where entire Chennai & TN came to a stand still is one example. Fringe elements infiltrated the student protests and started anti-nationalistic agenda and police showed them their place after the legal hurdles were cleared (you would have seen lath icharge visuals on media last Jan).... Center & State should be vigilant against these foreign NGOs trying to impose their animal rights templates in our culture through bans in the guise of animal/human rights through pliable liberal courts....trying to stop Jallikattu in TN and Kambala race in Karnataka. The current GOI has done a pretty good job in muzzling these NGOs.

Rest assured when shit hits the fan you can count Aruval (a type of Bill hook present in most household of rural TN) draw blood for our tricolor in equal vigour as a kukri.

"Indoctrination of Dravidian culture from childhood & race superiority"- i have not heard of such a thing all my life being taught to kids (probably some political stage speech tag line famous some decades ago not now). Only indoctrination the kids suffer from is bloody "study, study, study".

However as some one rightly pointed out some fringe sections of minorities of India (definitely NOT all) vow allegiance to Vatican and Mecca and not to Delhi.

Regret to digress from the topic of this thread.

its great to hear from nationalistic tamilian perspective as well. i have written what pepl have told me and also what i have surmised from some events. in most of cases its true as well. to b fair i had also written this" im pretty hopeful not all tamilians r like that." i nvr shrink from criticizing my state kerala as well. we r goin to the dogs. verge of ruin and loss of our culture and way of life. i know that very well. but the attitude of some tamilians tend to grate on people's patience and some these guys try to change their behaviour. but im also glad there is a tamil grp that opposes anti nationalistic activities.

However as some one rightly pointed out some fringe sections of minorities of India (definitely NOT all) vow allegiance to Vatican and Mecca and not to Delhi. yes, an unfortunate truth, again patriots are there as well.

but i nvr undertsood the allegience that som tamils hav to lankans. there were also cases where indian army convoys were attacked by political parties. wat i said abt karunanidhi and co is a fact as well since these were public statements, not my imagination or hearsay. the commies in kerala also say the same stuff.

and Jayalalitha who was anti-LTTE won and went on to beat anti-incumbency and won for the 2nd term.
jayalalitha was the greatest thing that happened to tamil nadu. luv the lady. what happened to her need to b addressed and those who caused her death shud b punished. but then again those culprits hav won the election right! this is the sad state of indian democracy.

Regret to digress from the topic of this thread. same, v shudn't derail this thread.

 

[FOXBAT ALOK]

 

[12arya]

http://www.news18.com/news/india/th...ring-surgical-strike-in-pakistan-1336153.html

The Chachro Raid of 1971 – India's Most Daring Surgical Strike in Pakistan
One of the most audacious and memorable among them is the raid on Chachro and several other Pakistani military positions 80km inside enemy territory in 1971.

The September 29 surgical strikes on terrorist positions across the Line of Control captured the imagination of the country. The strikes even became a political tool for some leaders in the ruling BJP to flout. Army officers point at several such strikes in the past. One of the most audacious and memorable among them is the raid on Chachro and several other Pakistani military positions 80km inside enemy territory. Specially-trained commandos of the 10 Para hit enemy positions and returned without suffering a single casualty. News18 gets access to rare photos and speaks to two surviving members of the operation to piece together one of the most challenging missions. This at a time when they had little or no technology to help them deep inside enemy territory. The commandos travelled over 500km hitting Pakistani positions.

At 0700 hours, December 5, 1971, men of the Desert Scorpions (10 Para Commandos) come under intense medium machine gun (MMG) fire from gun positions on top of sand dunes at Kita about 70 km into enemy territory. The Jeep/Jonga-borne commandos take defence positions in the shadow of the night. As they look for options, one Jeep rushes towards the enemy without a care for personal safety, firing at the enemy position. Naik Nihal Singh has opened up his light machine gun (LMG) mounted on his Jeep. The darkness acts as cover, the enemy only has the machine gun burst to aim at. This audacious charge gives the other teams time to start firing — 18 LMGs open up and in a few hours, the enemy positions are overrun, the survivors abandon the posts and escape.

This was the start to one of the most audacious commando missions in the world undertaken by the Indian Army’s Para Commandos. Inspired by the British SAS raid behind enemy lines at a German airfield in Fuka, Lybia during the Second World War, this successful operation established the Indian Army’s dominance in the desert during the 1971 war.

This operation was led by Lt Col Bhawani Singh. For four days, the battalion infiltrated deep inside enemy territory and carried out raids on enemy positions at Chachro and Virwah. Lt Col Singh was awarded the Mahavir Chakra for his leadership and courage.

Objectives of the Commando Team

Two teams — Alpha and Charlie — were trained for five months in desert warfare. A young commando battalion was entrusted with the crucial mission just five years after its formation in 1967. The objectives were to strike enemy positions 80 km inside their territory, hit their supply lines and create confusion. To complete their mission, the teams travelled over 500 km inside enemy territory, hitting various enemy positions despite having little knowledge of the terrain and the challenges that lay ahead.





“Ginger up the enemy” was the theme used by Lt Col Singh, who rose to be a brigadier and one of the most decorated officers in the Indian Army. He was the first to be called after retirement to boost the morale of his unit in Sri Lanka.

Target 1: Battle of Chachro

The team moved slowly through inhospitable terrain only by night. Brigadier Abraham Chacko was a Second Lieutenant then assigned to the Alpha team, the strike team that hit the Wing headquarters of the Pakistani Rangers in Chachro. Their mission — to create chaos and take vital ascents 80 km into enemy territory.

“The route was so bad that all silencers of our Jeeps/Jongas made us sound like a full-tank battalion moving into Pakistan,” remembers Brigadier Chacko. The racket not a positive for commando raid, which relies on stealth and silence. This, however, came out as an advantage for this group as the enemy abandoned positions at several locations thinking that this was indeed a tank column moving.

After the Kita firefight, a small patrol was tasked with route clearance till the wing headquarters at Chachro. This team moved in the night and gave a clearance to attack at 0400 hours on December 7. Alpha team took positions around town blocking every exit point, ready to provide cover fire. Charlie team moved in for the offensive at dawn. The operation was a risky one as the town had many civilians. The fear of collateral damage kept the teams on their toes. They could not risk hostile civilians so deep into enemy territory. The teams moved in swiftly and by first light the town had been taken.

The commandos moved on, their mission was only half complete. The town was handed over to 20 Rajput which counted 17 Pakistani casualties and took 12 prisoners. Such was the planning that the raiding team suffered no casualties. After the Chachro operation, Charlie team exfiltrated while the Alpha team moved towards its second target.

Target 2&3: Virawah and Nagarparkar
For the first raid on Chachro, the team moved only at night to stay undetected, but during the Virawah raid, they moved by day because of paucity of time. This was done at high risk. The team started its assault on Virawah at 0200 hours on December 8. The first contact with the enemy was at an observation post at 0130 hours. “I signalled the Jongas to stop when we noticed movement in the bushes about 25 yards away. A small patrol led by me was formed. Closer to the observation post, I lobbed the grenade and charged. We got into hand to hand combat with the enemy,” remembers Col MPS Choudhary, who led one group of commandos in the attack. As they approached the Rangers camp, the latter fired in panic but in the opposite direction. The commandos opened up the camp with motor fire followed by 12 light machine guns. The assault did not last long. The Rangers fled their positions. Virawah was taken.

The commandos then moved into Nagarparkar and the tehsil headquarter was taken over without much difficulty by the first light of December 8. The teams were back to their bases after this operation.

Target 4: Islamkot
Alpha group did not get much time to rest. They were reassigned immediately to another mission. This was an attack on a suspected ammunition dump in Islamkot. The group entered Pakistan again and reached Sundegaon by 1900 hours on December 16. The village was empty. In the shadow of the night, they moved towards Islamkot and waited just 2 km east of the enemy camp. At 0530 hours, they launched their assault but found the camp empty.

The Ambush at Lunio
On their way back from the mission is when they faced the enemy again. “On our way back after handing over Islamkot, leading Jeep with Captain Das saw dust raised by moving vehicles. We immediately fanned out and went into ambush. Other teams joined in and we opened fire. I think 18-20 enemy soldiers were killed on the spot and rest were taken prisoners of war,” remembers Col MPS Chaudhary.



The Surgical Strike in Numbers
A look at enemy casualty and prisoners of war taken:

Chachro
Killed - 17
Prisoners of War - 12

Islamkot
Killed - 19
Prisoners of War - 10

Weapons Seized
.30 MMG with tripod - 01
.303 Rifles - 26
.303 LMG - 01
Sten machine carbine - 01
Pistols - 02
.303 ammunition - 10,000 rounds
Rifle and LMG magazines - 44
Bayonets - 20
Double-barrel gun - 01
Medium-sized truck - 01
Hand grenades - 03

Training for the Strike
*The commandos trained from June to November for the assault
*Jongas and Jeeps were modified to hold guns and all provisions for the mission
*The unit had Khoja Rajputs in the ranks who knew the terrain well
*The team lead by Brigadier Swai Bhawani Singh, who was the Maharaja of Jaipur and knew the area, was lovingly called Tiger by his men for his leadership skills
*The commandos were trained in repairing Jeeps and Jongas

 

[12arya]

https://swarajyamag.com/defence/201...ing-there-would-be-no-revenge-for-uri-attacks

2016 Surgical Strikes Anniversary: How Modi And His Ministers Fooled Pakistan Into Thinking There Would Be No Revenge For Uri Attacks

As blanket coverage of the Uri attack took over television news and the internet on the morning of 18 September, a chill descended upon India’s Raisina Hill in Delhi. Emergency meetings were held in the most secret ‘war rooms’ of the security establishment, one of them presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with National Security Adviser Ajit Doval.

It was at this meeting that the Indian leadership secretly took two major decisions: (1) the Indian military would take the fight to the enemy this time to deliver a brutal response to the Uri attack; (2) the country’s ministers, including Modi himself, would play their parts to perpetuate and amplify India’s reputation for inaction until such a time when the response had been delivered. An elaborate, carefully crafted political masquerade would thus begin the following morning.

Meanwhile, 800 km away and high up in the Himalayas, a young Indian Army SF officer sat grimly in front of a small television in his barracks. Uri was his area. His hunting ground. Away on a special two-month mission to the Siachen Glacier with a small team of men from his unit, the calm of Major Mike Tango’s demeanour belied the fury that consumed him within. He watched familiar pictures from the Uri army camp flicker on the screen in front of him. And just as the Indian government was about to decide on an unprecedented course of action, a prescient warning rang in the Major’s mind.

"We knew the balloon had gone up. This wasn’t a small incident. There was no question of sitting silent. This was beyond breaking point," he says.

As second-in-command, or 2IC, of an elite Parachute Regiment (Special Forces), or the Para-SF as it is called, Maj Tango had spent a decade of his 13 service years in J&K. He had been part of over 20 successful anti-terror operations. And yet, the morning of 18 September had sent a knife through the officer’s heart. He could not wait to get back to the rest of his unit deployed in and around where the terrorists had struck.

Upon receiving the call from Udhampur that he had been expecting, from his unit’s Commanding Officer, or CO, Maj Tango gathered his men immediately for a quick return to the Valley. The team reached Dras that same night of 18 September — a date the men would never forget.

The next morning, as they began their journey to Srinagar, things were already in motion in Delhi. The first minister to make a statement was former Army Chief, General V K Singh, who, after the traditional condemnations, made a remarkably generous appeal in the circumstances — he said that India could not act on emotion. It would be a critical spark to the success of the masquerade, followed shortly thereafter by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, who declared that the sacrifice of the Uri soldiers would not go in vain. Speaking to the Army in Srinagar, Parrikar sounded a familiar note, asking the Army to take ‘firm action’, but not specifying what such action needed to be. This was standard-issue Bharat Sarkaar (Indian Government) response after a terror attack.

However, to ensure that the government’s messaging was not so measured as to rouse suspicion, junior ministers were tasked with adding some fire to the proceedings. That crucial bit was deftly served up by Manohar Parrikar’s junior minister, Subhash Bhamre, who declared that the time had come ‘to hit back’.

Two more top-level meetings took place on 19 September — one chaired by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who had cancelled his visit to Russia, and the other by Prime Minister Modi at the PMO. Army Chief Gen Dalbir Singh, who had dashed to the Kashmir Valley just hours after the previous day’s attack, had been conveyed the government’s clear political directive. He arrived in Srinagar with the green signal that the SF had so far only ever dreamt about: permission to plan and execute a retaliatory strike with the government’s full backing.

Over the next 24 hours, the Army would draw up a devastating revenge plan, with options for the government leadership to choose from.

Excerpted from India’s Most Fearless: True Stories of Modern Military Heroes by Shiv Aroor and Rahul Singh, Penguin Books, 2017, with the permission of the publisher.

 

[pruthvi24]

Group captain marwah an IAF officer who was arrested for spying for Pak ISI just few days ago was the instructor of GARUD commandos and has given information about GARUDS just after GARUDS took more active role in Kashmir and in counter terrorist ops

 

[12arya]

https://theprint.in/2017/12/28/indias-dirty-little-war-in-jaffna/


India’s ‘dirty little war’ in Jaffna, heroism amid ineptitude & new friendships under fire

30 Years after IPKF: The passing away yesterday of Col. Anil Kaul, decorated hero of Op Pawan, brings back the truth of a military disaster.

India’s unexpected war in Sri Lanka caught me on the wrong foot by 12,000 km. I was still finishing the last month of my sabbatical year in Washington when the fighting broke out. And as I returned home, the media was full of coverage, often loaded, of the IPKF disaster in Sri Lanka’s Jaffna peninsula.

Loaded because the Bofors scandal, and many other missteps, already had Rajiv Gandhi under widespread attack. Sri Lanka was therefore seen as “babalog” political stupidity, rather than military incompetence. In the process, we were guilty of both, insensitivity to Indian soldiers, their courage and sacrifice, and also conveniently overlooking the complacence of our higher commanders. Now, this was obviously not a war we were going to ever lose, although my friend Hardeep Puri, who was by then our first secretary in Colombo under J.N. ‘Mani’ Dixit, sometimes tells you, sort of semi-lightheartedly, that there was one evening so tense that it felt as if Palaly (Jaffna airbase and the IPKF’s 54 Infantry Division HQ) was going to fall. Hardeep had just seen the truce agreement he had so painstakingly drafted and signed with Mahattaya (Madras Cafe’s Mallaya) fall apart.

It is creditable how much of that initial messiness Shoojit Sircar got accurately in his film. The fact that early IPKF patrols were routinely ambushed, pinned down and annihilated. How its officers were picked out by snipers. How the LTTE seemed to have inside information on all IPKF moves (more about this a little later). The most creditable footage in his film, however fleeting and sensitively handled, is of the Tigers ransacking Indian soldiers’ bodies and picking weapons, souvenirs and trophies from them. Note, particularly, a boyish Sikh soldier sitting, frozen in rigor mortis. That quality of research you didn’t expect from a mainstream Indian filmmaker, and we will shortly explain why.

On my return to India, I was deeply saddened even offended by the celebratory coverage of the war. Cover pictures of Indian soldiers’ bodies, close-ups of Tigers displaying caps, identity cards, boots of dead Indian soldiers. You had never seen an Indian war covered like that, you haven’t since, and you never will. Of course, I also felt rotten having missed out on the big story which, for the magazine, was covered by my friend and colleague Anita Pratap, who later worked for Time and CNN. The photographer accompanying her, Shyam Tekwani, was my frequent travelling partner in Sri Lanka subsequently, and now teaches at the Asia Pacific Centre for Security Studies, Hawaii. I did get into many arguments in our newsroom on how we had covered the story and why it was necessary to now reconstruct what exactly had gone wrong, and the lessons learnt, etc.

My reward was being assigned that story. And in the third week of December 1987, I landed in Colombo, having been briefed (lectured, more like it!) by Gen. Sundarji, his DGMO Lt. Gen. (later Army chief) Bipin Chandra Joshi, and his staff.

Since association by events is sometimes the safest way to remember dates, particularly if you do not maintain elaborate notebooks—as in my case, hardly, and notoriously the sketchiest ones—I can tell you I was on way to Jaffna from Colombo in a rented Mitsubishi Lancer on 24 December and had just crossed Vavuniya when everything came to a standstill.

Angry, grieving mobs blocked the streets. MGR had just died. That’s how I know the precise date. A bandh had been declared by Tamils. I couldn’t go forward or back, knew no Tamil, had no food or shelter, and you know how early the winter sun sets that far in the east. But I was lucky again, as an IPKF patrol of Maratha Light Infantry Regiment passed by and its leader, then a very young Captain C.K. Menon, offered me shelter in his camp.

From him and his colleagues that night, in that small camp in the danger zone, I heard my first stories of the ordeal Indian soldiers had just been through.

We connected decades later at the ITC Grand Central Hotel in Mumbai, where he was serving in a senior capacity, having left the Army as a colonel (he has moved up the ladder in ITC hotels now).

And if that isn’t sufficient evidence that the myth called reporter’s luck is a reality, let me tell you who came to my rescue similarly on the drive back, now caught closer to Jaffna with the prospect of crossing the infamous sniper and mine-infested lagoon at dusk. A patrol of the Gurkha was passing by and the wiry young Captain leading it suggested I take shelter with him at his camp overnight. He said his company had just lost several lives in an ambush in the same area. I had mostly forgotten about the incident. Until, at the annual Hindustan Times Leadership Summit dinner in November 2015, the then Army Chief, Gen. Dalbir Singh, asked me if I remembered the young Gurkha officer who had sheltered me. It was he, wiry as then.

True enough, after absorbing the initial setbacks, they had taken and secured the entire Jaffna peninsula. But the price had been shocking: 350 killed and 1,100 wounded in this month-long charge. The casualty rate, at 7 per cent of all troops involved, was twice as high as in our wars against Pakistan. One of the five brigades that assaulted Jaffna, the 41st, which was airlifted on 17 October and was launched straight on the coastal road axis leading to Jaffna Fort, had 272 casualties, or 17 per cent of its strength.

The 72nd also suffered heavy casualties, including its deputy brigade commander, Col. D.S. Saraon. The heavily armoured BMP Infantry Fighting Vehicle he was riding was blown up by a 200-kg mine. The 13.2-tonne vehicle was tossed more than 30 ft and its doors, each weighing more than 250 kg, were found more than a hundred yards away. Another illustrious battalion, 4/5 Gurkhas, had its commandant and all but one of its majors killed one afternoon. This is not a war anybody had expected and, regrettably, prepared to fight. I wrote a five-page reconstruction and analysis headlined ‘In a rush to vanquish’ (India Today, 31 January 1988).

T-72 tanks, Mi-25 helicopter gunships had come without ammunition, infantry had been airlifted from places as far as Gwalior and thrown into battle without even three hours of familiarisation. There is no excuse for this kind of complacence.

The IPKF’s first casualties were five soldiers from its finest unit, the paracommandos. Waylaid by the LTTE while casually going to collect provisions on 8 October, they were burnt in public view with tyres thrown around their necks. That disastrous beginning spilled over into the most talked about setback then: the combined, heli-dropped paracommando and infantry raid (11 October) on the Jaffna University campus where Prabhakaran and his top aides were living.

It went wrong from the word go. Only two-thirds of the commandos (10 Paracommando) could be landed and the infantry company (13 Sikh Light Infantry), which was to secure the landing ground, the football field from where IPKF helicopters used to routinely pick up LTTE commanders for talks, failed to fetch up, and the special assault forces contingent was reduced to fighting a battle for survival instead.

As for Sikh LI, only a platoon could be landed, and in the wrong playground, several built-up lanes away. The rest of the company could not land as helicopters came under medium machine gun fire. The platoon, led by Major Birendra Singh, a close relation of diplomat-politician K. Natwar Singh, was encircled and wiped out after a valiant fight. Only one of the 30, Sepoy Gora Singh, survived, and was taken prisoner by the LTTE. It is believed Prabhakaran displayed him to his fighters, kicked him in public and said, let him go, so he will tell them not to fight us again. Gora Singh, however, brought back the story of one of the Indian Army’s most poignant battles ever, where, out of ammunition, the last three survivors even carried out a final, suicidal bayonet charge. The LTTE looted and stripped all the bodies, piled them in the nearby Nagaraja Vihar Temple on public display. Then it cremated them after simply throwing a barrel of petrol over them. That’s why it’s been so revolting now to see Tamil Nadu politicians feeling so sorry for the Tigers.

This is why we had said earlier that Madras Cafe’s footage of the first battles, along with the young Sikh soldier (remember the Sikh LI platoon) in rigor mortis and the LTTE boys plundering the bodies, was so remarkable. It was the first instance of Indian filmmakers challenging the old Haqeeqat-Hindustan ki Kasam-Border notion of Indian war cinema. I walked around that ground weeks later and still found shreds of the Sikhs’ uniforms. In the nearby building, there was more evidence of the sickening plunder of those bodies: pieces of Sikh LI battle fatigues, cross-belts, boots, water bottles, epaulettes, all mixed with .50 mg MMG shells, sometimes ankle-deep. That tells you how much fire that one lost platoon withstood in the course of those valiant 12 hours.

The commandos, separated in the football ground, had done a little better, with six killed and nine wounded. They were finally rescued in an audacious and brilliantly innovative operation by their commanding officer, Lt. Col. Dalbir Singh, covered by three T-72 tanks of 65 Armoured Regiment.

Since by now it was known that the Tigers had mined all approaches, Maj. Anil Kaul, the tank commander (his father had first raised this regiment), remembered a railway line skirting the campus and decided to drive the tanks on the rail tracks instead, for once surprising the LTTE. But his own tank was hit on the turret by an RPG shell (or an MMG burst) and he lost his eye and hand as he bravely peeped out to navigate. His inspired troops put him on morphine, fought on, and brought about that heroic rescue of the stranded commandos.

The Col. Kaul with an eye-patch that we’ve been seeing on our TV channels, usually furious over some military issue or the other, and who once famously demanded that I be hanged upside down from a tree and flogged (after our story on the Army movements on the night of 16 January 2012, that spooked Raisina Hill), was the same valiant cavalry man. He also wrote me a warm email in 2013, reminding me I had visited him in hospital where he was reviving then. He also said he now wanted to contest elections in 2014 as an independent. I failed to dissuade him despite trying.

He passed away this Wednesday, 27 December 2017, and his friends and fans joined his family for his ceremonial funeral at Brar Square, Delhi Cantt, on Thursday. His passing away made us swap the sequence of the second and third parts in this series of ‘First Person, Second Draft’.

Pardon me for leap-frogging the calendar, but Col. Kaul’s latter day anger apart, in Sri Lanka I got nothing but large-hearted access, affection and hospitality from the Indian Army. I did have only one tough scrap, although well meaning.

This was in Batticaloa in September 1989 where, after a briefing and lunch with the GOC of 57 Mountain Division, I was stepping out to go to the city. As Tekwani and I came out of the general’s ops room, we found three army trucks and a jeep, machine guns mounted, tarpaulins ripped and battle-ready Sikh soldiers spilling over from each one.

“This is your escort,” said the general. We protested that we were safest as journalists, and going out with such a convoy would endanger our lives and the soldiers’, as the LTTE may just presume we were some Indian VIPs. The argument became heated. And the irritated general gave up on us, saying, “alright, then you are on your own, and I am taking the chopper to an outpost. Then, if something happens to you in this area, at least I will not be responsible. But you are being stupid anyway”.

He was, of course, speaking from sincere concern. He was a wonderful soldier and his name is Maj. Gen. Ashok Mehta, who is now one of your more sensible and articulate TV generals. Yet another aside: he subsequently married prominent political journalist Aditi Phadnis. I can make a disclosure now, the original tip-off on the Tamil rebel training camps in India, that led to the first story of March 1984, had come from Aditi’s mother, Urmila, a highly respected international affairs professor at JNU. Now don’t say that reporters’ stories are filled with digressions.

Shoojit’s film suggests that the LTTE knew all about the IPKF’s moves because some traitor was leaking to them. He was only halfway right. There were no traitors, but the LTTE knew for sure. As the IPKF later discovered, the LTTE’s communications, electronics and eavesdropping ability was on par with modern armies. An Army College of Combat team later researched the disasters, particularly at Jaffna University, and concluded that the Tigers had intercepted the IPKF wireless on that assault night. Even the range and height settings of their machine guns were perfect when the helicopters arrived.

The five brigades that converged on Jaffna moved at different speeds and suffered a varying, but high, number of casualties. But the brigade that suffered the least, the 18th, also reached Jaffna the fastest.

Why, I learnt during those many conversations over long nights spent at the regrouping and recuperating units’ field headquarters. Its commander, Brig. J.S. “Jogi” Dhillon, spoke at length about jujitsu, of how to turn your enemy’s strengths against him. So his troops moved only at night and only through the fields and lagoons, avoiding all roads, thereby skirting minefields and snipers.

But most importantly, he showed the courage and military dash to use the most potent weapon in the IPKF’s armoury: the deadly Mi-25 helicopter gunships, the only time that weapon has been used in our history. His brigade had to take the Tiger stronghold of Chavakachcheri (where Prabhakaran executed Mahattaya and his 257 soldiers on this day in 1994 – 28 December), and heavy casualties were anticipated.

He prevailed on the high command to let him use Mi-25s. All they did was fire just 32 rockets at the Chavakachcheri bus station, supposed to be the LTTE nerve centre. He took the town with just three casualties. There was the predictable outcry that many of the 28 Tamils killed by Mi-25 rockets were innocent civilians. But Jogi’s point was, so what were they doing there? He quoted the Chetwode Oath to me, which made the safety and well being of his troops next only to his nation’s security for an Indian Army officer. “As the Americans used to sometimes call Vietnam, Shekhar, this is a dirty little war and people will die, ” he said, “and because many will die, they better be yours rather than mine.” Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket had probably not released in India by then, so I am not sure he borrowed that line from the young marine there, although spoken in a different context.

Dhillon, Brigadiers Manjit Singh (of the battered 41st) and B.D. Mishra (72nd) spoke of other experiences and lessons. How the Tigers had rigged Chinese-made sniper chairs on the top of palm trees where sharpshooters waited entire days with rifles equipped with telescopic sights, how they expertly picked out officers from Indian columns: a skill taught to them, sadly, by our own Army instructors when we were hand-in-glove with them. Also, their expertise with electronics and explosives and their ability to marry both. At one point, the IPKF was so harassed by IEDs electronically detonated from afar that it cut off power to Jaffna for several days.

On the way back from Jaffna and on subsequent visits to Sri Lanka as well, I was given generous audiences in the newly built chancery, a monument to disastrous CPWD architecture and L-1 construction at such a premium ocean-front spot, by High Commissioner ‘Mani’ Dixit, who once had chided me for that 1984 training camps story but was now so genuinely affectionate.

The Sri Lankan media mocked him as “viceroy”, and Mani smirked as only he could as he cleaned and dusted his pipe and looked out of his window at the two Indian navy frigates routinely anchored close enough for you to see the markings and ensigns. “Sadly, Shekhar, you’ve proven to be right and we so wrong with the Tigers,” he said, “These thugs were never to be trusted and I am sure nobody ever would.”

Not much later, Premadasa did, and paid with his life. But Mani also said another important thing. He said the IPKF experience had told him India was still not ready to be a big power. “The first evening of fighting, and I knew we were not yet ready for force projection overseas, and willing to pay the price, politically and militarily, for it. We are a long way from being a big power,” he said.

Of course, over two decades, we became close friends as our paths crossed in Pakistan (when he was high commissioner there) and later, when he served as foreign secretary, he wrote a regular column for The Indian Express when I edited it and then returned to South Block as the UPA’s first national security advisor. But you could see that he was somehow stressed in that job. The Mani Dixit smirk and twinkle were now missing. At a dinner at my home for Fareed Zakaria on 2 January 2005, I asked Mani why he looked so stressed. Then he spoke that other line which I have borrowed often, in many contexts as a political journalist. “It takes you a lifetime learning the ways of this benighted city,” he said, “and by the time you learn them, it is too late in life to be of much use to you.” As more guests came in, he said we should meet again at leisure and he would explain.

That was not to be. Dixit had a heart attack later that night and next morning so many of us, friends, fans, admirers and sometimes sparring partners, were at his funeral. Frankly, he would have been a much, much better man to tell you the story of that bloody period in Sri Lanka than any journalist watching from the sidelines, or filmmaker skirting political minefields.

Epilogue: I got some lashing in the Colombo press in 2013 for saying at the India-Sri Lanka Society Independence Day banquet that the country seemed to be missing the real peace dividend that should have followed the successful completion of a long war.

Where is the creative, liberal, civil society renaissance that usually follows such wars? I said the army was still too big and, with 4 per cent of the able-bodied Sinhala male population still in uniform (India has around 0.2 per cent), the political and institutional balance was skewed unhealthily. I also spoke of the need to celebrate diversity and to build stronger institutions as, in a democracy, that was the natural protection against majoritarian excess.

I got calls from Colombo journalists saying I had challenged Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and attacked its judiciary, etc. This is fallacious. I believe, on the contrary, that Mahinda Rajapaksa made a historic contribution to his nation and did a great favour to India and Tamil Nadu by ridding us all of the cruellest, most deceitful, fascist force in our history. He deserves India’s gratitude. And the LTTE deserves nobody’s sympathy. But Sri Lanka’s peace dividend should not be confined to a construction boom.

 

[12arya]

Group captain marwah an IAF officer who was arrested for spying for Pak ISI just few days ago was the instructor of GARUD commandos and has given information about GARUDS just after GARUDS took more active role in Kashmir and in counter terrorist ops

WHY DO THESE GUYS GET HONEY TRAPPED LIKE THIS AFTER SO MANY EXAMPLES???


if they need to have affairs aren't there enough indian women or have all of us indian females bcom extinct!!!!

 

[12arya]

https://www.scoopwhoop.com/ever-won...rces-go-through-an-inside-account/#.sqy7qxwmd

Ever Wondered What Kind Of Rigorous Training Our Special Forces Go Through? An Inside Account

Seventy per cent of those who voluntarily opt for the Indian Special Forces fail.

Seventy per cent. Let that sink in.

The Indian Special Forces are the crème-de-la-crème of our soldiers, men who train in ‘expectation of the absolute worst’. There is no training manual. What they endure to pass a whole year of brutal training and probation must remain in the shadows. What we do know is that they have to go through an unforgiving regime of physical torture tests, coupled with terrifying trials that judge their mental toughness, while they are deprived of sleep and combating starvation. All this is designed to find their ‘breaking point’. If that breaking point is ever found, they’re out.

While I was researching Operation Jinnah, I heard several hair-raising tales from serving Special Forces officers. I narrate just a few here.

No Special Forces soldier forgets the ‘stress phase’ of training. One officer was ordered to begin his sleep deprivation cycles right at the start: the first cycle lasted three days without sleep; the second cycle, five days. He then had to stay awake in a standing position for a whole week.

Finally, at the end of that week, he was grilled for two hours about a war drill where an officer on probation had ‘fucked things up’ – all to see if the officer would break and give them the name just so they would let him rest.

Then there was the officer who remembered how his seniors randomly ordered high intensity physical tasks during a regular mental stress test, ‘just to mix things up’. He was ordered onto a treadmill at a very high speed and incline, in full combat gear, for 15 minutes, while three senior officers stood next to him and screamed out his flaws. It nearly broke him. Nearly.

During a field survival training at an uninhabited island in the Andaman & Nicobar, a squad of Marine Commandos had been deployed for eight days without rations – a simulated marooning in a warfare setting. The men had to prepare their own drinking water from the dew they collected and eat off the land – crabs, mostly. The island had no vegetation; they woke up at sunrise and conducted amphibious drills with weapons all day long, as the harsh tropical sun beat down on them. By the end, four of the men were at the end of their limits.

A para-commando is not just a warrior; they also have to train for two other key tasks: intelligence gathering and developing local contacts. In Jammu and Kashmir, two officers were asked to wear burqas and walk alongside a nullah down a hill to a village near the team base, and then cross back. It was a small settlement, but a hostile one, a stopping point for terrorists infiltrating via the Uri-Bandipora area. They very nearly failed. The task has never been ordered since.

Then there’s the story of the hangul.

It’s a tale I will never forget. Every time I think of it, I can smell it.

On a June afternoon, an unmarked Maruti Gypsy was making its way towards the Srinagar-Bandipora highway when the driver slams the brakes at something lying on the road. Two men step out of the vehicle to have a closer look, and they find the carcass of a large deer. A hangul perhaps, native to J&K, but they aren’t sure. Flies are swarming over the animal’s eyes, tongue and the pulpy wounds on the blood-stained fur.

Then one of them orders the other to ‘open it’. The junior doesn’t flinch. He pulls out a 9-inch hunting knife, gets on his knees and plunges the blade into the dead animal’s stomach. He tightens his grip, and in one motion, slices the animal open from its stomach to the base of its rib cage. He parts the animal’s rotting flesh. A horrible stench rises. The senior doesn’t blink. The junior runs the back of his hand unconsciously across his nose. He is then issued a second order: ‘Place your head in the carcass.

The junior pauses for a moment. He holds apart the flesh, holds his breath, and buries his head in the carcass. He tries not to breathe. The flies swarm to this new feast. Suddenly, the he feels the steel grip of the senior forcing his head deeper into the animal’s guts. He gasps, the festering fluids coating his face. His head is held inside the rotting deer for a whole minute, maybe longer.

The senior, a Major, and the junior, a Lieutenant, belonged to a Special Forces team from a battalion of the Army’s Parachute Regiment. The Lieutenant was in his second week of probation, a three-month period that soldiers spend in their active units before they are declared fit and worthy of operations.

‘We train in expectation of the absolute worst,’ he told me. Having his head shoved into a dead deer was a mere appetizer for what would follow.

 

[pruthvi24]

Group captain marwah an IAF officer who was arrested for spying for Pak ISI just few days ago was the instructor of GARUD commandos and has given information about GARUDS just after GARUDS took more active role in Kashmir and in counter terrorist ops

Update according to India today he has also leaked classified documents regarding cyber security and spy satellites
This is treason he could have informed authorities instead he chose to leak documents by the way he was in air force HQ vayu bhavan

 

[Darth Malgus]

Update according to India today he has also leaked classified documents regarding cyber security and spy satellites
This is treason he could have informed authorities instead he chose to leak documents by the way he was in air force HQ vayu bhavan

Should be set as an example, execute him for treason. I wonder if we have military execution.

 

[rkhanna]

^^ Guys wrong thread. pls take it elsewhere. just taking up bandwidth and adding pages for no reason