IRON IN THEIR HEARTS

CAPTAIN R HARSHAN, 25
2 PARA COMMANDOS
hen they brought his body home, the commandos had few things belonging to the young captain to carry with them. But among them were a number of books. “The trunks they brought contained many books, over a hundred of them. Harshan was always a quiet boy who loved literature, loved to read,” recalls his father K Radhakrishnan Nair, in Thiruvananthapuram.
It’s five months now since that hot March 20 afternoon when the phone rang at a Thiruvananthapuram house and a voice at the other end told Nair that early that morning 25-year-old Captain R Harshan of the 2 Para Commandos had been felled in a firefight with the Hizb-ul Mujahideen on a cold hillock in Baramulla.
“They said it was rainy and snowy up there when he took his commandos at dawn to flush out the militants reported there. He was shot in the thigh, but he went on fighting. He killed a couple of top militants. Then they shot him in the neck,’’ recalls the father.
Choking on his thoughts, Nair remembers how he had, on one occasion, tried to rid Harshan of his childhood obsession with the Indian Army. There are no soldiers in the family—Harshan’s elder brother is an IAS trainee and the younger, an engineer. “He was adamant. He left his engineering degree course after four months to get into the National Defence Academy. I tried persuading him against it, and was even happy when he had a medical problem. He was so talented that he used to win prizes in everything from drama to elocution to boxing,” he says.
It was only after Harshan’s body reached home that many neighbours knew the boy had become an Army captain, an elite Special Forces commando at that. He loved walking barefoot to the neighbouring temples to pray early morning, everytime he came home on leave, and making friends with everyone. He was very attached to his mother and would squat in the kitchen and talk for hours to her. “I once asked him how someone like him would want to be in the wars,” says Nair. “He recited the Gita to me, which he read regularly and kept with him.”
As Lt Colonel P Srivastava, who was second in command of Harshan’s unit, put it, “I had not met another officer like him in any Special Forces formation. So quiet and so soft-spoken that we often had to prod him to speak up—yet so good at his job that he was handling the entire training of his formation by himself.”
The last time Nair had seen his son was over a year ago, the last he heard his voice on the phone was two days before they brought back his body. Harshan had called his father to say he was finally going to take leave and be home soon. He had tried calling his younger brother Manu in Chennai on his mobile the same night. Manu will now forever rue that he could not pick the phone or return that call.
“He had kept putting off his coming home because he did not want to leave some anti-militant operation midway. We badly missed him, and I had even thought of sending him a telegram saying I was very sick,” says Nair.
On the eve of Independence day, when the President’s message reached Nair’s home announcing the Ashoka Chakra for his son, Nair and his wife had not quite lived down the numbing scent of incense, the flowers and the flag-draped casket going past in a haze five months ago. “He died for what he believed in. That matters,’’ says Nair with a quiet acceptance.
—Rajeev PI

COLONEL V VASANTH, 40
MARATHA LIGHT
INFANTRY
When a defect in his nose stood in the way of his ambition to be a soldier, Venugopal Vasanth underwent a corrective surgery to ensure he was not denied entry into the Indian Military Academy a second time.
Eighteen years later, he became a hero, awarded the Ashoka Chakra. In the early hours of July 31, Colonel Vasanth, 40, was killed in an exchange of gunfire with infiltrators in the Uri sector of Kashmir, as he led a pre-dawn offensive by the ninth battalion of the Maratha Light Infantry he commanded.
“Colonel Vasanth led from the front in the true spirit of the army. Though he laid down his life he ensured that all eight infiltrators his unit engaged that day were wiped out,’’ army chief General J J Singh said before meeting the martyr’s widow Subhashini, 35, and daughters Rukmini, 10, and Yashoda, 7, at their home in Bangalore.
The family had spent time together in the Uri sector during the recent summer holidays and had returned only a fortnight prior to Vasanth’s death, family members said.
“He had heard about the army when he was three years old and had wanted to be a soldier since then,’’ says Subhashini, a Bharatanatyam dancer. Being a soldier meant being in the line of fire. His mother Prafulla says, “I often asked him whether a colonel needed to participate in operations and he would reply ‘I go where my men go’.’’
For his elderly father Venugopal and his mother, Vasanth’s death compounds the loss of their older son in 2004 to illness. In the true tradition of an army family, however, the couple have gamely shouldered the loss. “I had a brave son who was always at the front. I am proud of him,” says Venugopal.
Family members had managed to get a glimpse into Vasanth’s life during his stint at the commando unit in Belgaum in Karnataka. “He would say his uniform gave him responsibility and that it was his duty to be an example to his boys,’’ says his wife’s uncle, Rajagopal Kadambi. “After he was posted in Kashmir he would often tell us about encounters with militants attempting to infiltrate into the country. It was not new to him and he had been at the forefront of several efforts to thwart infiltration,’’ Kadambi adds.
A day before he died, Vasanth called to tell his wife that he was going out on a mission. “I wish I could tell Vasanth personally that he has been honoured with the Ashoka Chakra. I feel an immense loss, but I am happy that his efforts have been acknowledged,’’ Subhashini says, holding her daughters.
—Johnson TA

NAIB SUBEDAR CHUNNI LAL, 39
8 J & K LIGHT
INFANTRY
It was almost as if Naib Subedar Chunni Lal was awarded the Ashoka Chakra 20 years too late. “In 1987, when he was awarded Sena medal for his role in capturing the Bana post at a height of 21,153 ft on Siachen, he felt he deserved a higher honour. However, he did not let this dull his basic soldierly instinct,” says his father Shanker Dass, a resident of the remote Bhara village in Doda district of Jammu and Kashmir.
Lal’s Siachen exploits only fuelled his daring. “I had told him to leave the force, but he refused as he did not want to come back without doing something big,’’ recalls his widow Chinta Devi.
The big moment came on the night of June 23-24 and Chunni Lal achieved his life’s aim—the highest sacrifice for his country and the highest peacetime gallantry award. Taking advantage of poor visibility and low clouds, militants had sneaked across the LoC into Indian territory in Keran sector of Kupwara district. After finding themselves surrounded and losing two of their accomplices, three terrorists made a suicidal bid to escape. Sensing a threat to the lives of his fellow soldiers—two juniors were already injured in the gun battle—the JCO, himself bleeding profusely, charged at the terrorists and killed them. However, he too succumbed.
Born in remote Paddar of Doda district in 1968, Lal and his parent migrated to Bhara a year later. “While still in school, he twice went to Doda to join the Army without informing anybody. He did not succeed, of course, since he was a minor,’’ says Dev Raj Thakur, a retired schoolteacher in Bhara.
Defence spokesman Colonel SD Goswami says that after joining 8 JAKLI in 1984, Lal excelled in military subjects, displayed exemplary courage and great comradeship. “He was an asset to the Indian Army and to the nation,” he says.
In 1992, Lal was awarded the Vir Chakra for displaying a high degree of devotion to duty while fighting back an attempted intrusion in Poonch sector during Operation Rakshak. He also earned commendations for his stint as a UN peacekeeper in Sudan, where he was in the forefront of operations at Malakal, for which his battalion received the UN Citation for Valour.
Back in his village, not everyone knew the boy had become a hero. ‘’We treated him like other village boys serving in the defence forces and we never knew that he was decorated twice for gallantry,’’ says village Numberdar Hans Raj. Lal never talked of his awards. He was simple, soft-spoken and always prepared to help others.
Colonel R P Singh, Commanding Officer, 8 JAKLI, remembers Lal more as a friend than a subordinate. “Chunni and I joined the unit at same time in late 1980s. I was then a 2nd Lieutenant and he a soldier.” The two, in spite of their ranks, struck up a friendship, which endured till the end.
At the time he died, Lal’s one wish was still unfulfilled—a new house. On the plot he bought nearly 2 km from the nearest motorable road in Bhara, stones lay piled up in disarray. “I will have to come home to personally supervise the construction work,’’ he had told wife Chinta Devi when he came home on leave in April and found the contractor had not supplied the bricks. He and his wife had themselves levelled the ground.
Chinta Devi and her children, Manbir Singh (16), Arti (10) and Manju (8), may not have a house, but they will forever be proud to be the family of a braveheart.
—Aroon Sharma and Mir Ehsan