Ultras elusive as needles, death lurks in haystacks

More than 1,000 troops of the Army, BSF and the Special Task Force spent icy nights and back-breaking days turning the 200 houses in the village upside down for militants. Two militants were killed. Rounds running into the thousands were expended. A logistical exercise running into lakhsof rupees.

At least six militants of the Hizbul Mujahideen and the Al Badr picked Gundrehman for a night8217;s stay on January 31. Gundrehman is what Army commanders describe as a 8220;difficult8221; village for it would offer the mujahids hospitality of food, women and a warm bed. Not a single tongue would wag before the Army betraying the militants8217; stay.

But tipped off by a source from outside the village, troops of 56 Mountain Brigade threw a tight noose around Gundrehman at 9 pm the same night. Soldiers of 15 Assam quickly 8220;made contact8221; with the militants and the chilly air reverberated with machine gun and grenade fire.

But this was the easier part, firing blindly into the night from a distance of 500 m at the houses from where militants had taken position. Army commanders have learnt not to search at night so as to cut down on casualties. It8217;s rarely so that two or three days pass without a solider dying or being wounded in the 10-year-long proxy war.

That nothing is straightforward or safeabout anti-militancy operations was a home truth that would dawn upon troops of the 1 Naga tasked to search the houses at first light. The civilians were evacuated first to avoid casualties and isolate the militants. Four hours of back-breaking search had gone by without success when all of a sudden a barely-visible black AK rifle barrel peeped out of a window and opened up fire at the rate of 60 rounds a minute.

The bullets sent soldiers and officers standing a mere 15 yards away diving and pushing for cover as all hell broke loose. Troops from all directions opened fire on the house. Frantic orders and yells for control punctuated the firing as soldiers next to the house were in real danger of being shot in the crossfire. No one knows who is firing and from where.

After a measure of control was brought about and the house literally doddering on its foundations, having been pulverised by a range of infantry weaponry, the civilian search party entered to locate the body. They came running out ashen-faced,for, the militant had survived the pounding and had jumped into the next house.

Soldiers approached the haystacks dotting the courtyard with much trepidation. They had to remove every bale in case the militant had burrowed into them. No Army officer wants a militant to escape by hiding in haystacks but no one wants a repeat of the incident in November last. A Pakistani militants had jumped out of one and had killed two soldiers of 18 Grenadiers.

The lofts in the house stacked with firewood and cattlefeed had to be painstakingly dismantled and dislodged from the roof. Memory was fresh of the disaster in a Budgam village when a militant burrowed deep into the firewood to open fire killing an Army jawan and two civilians who were searching the loft.

None of the Gundrehman villagers told the Army the hiding places of militants and lied consistently to the last man, woman and child. 8220;We have not seen any mujahid,8221; is the standard refrain. Some villagers go a step further. During an Army searchoperation in Yangoora village last March, women locked the house from outside and told the soldiers that it was empty. A cynical Lt S K Singh of 3 Kumaon broke open the door to be greeted with a hail of fire from four militants inside. He was lucky as he got away with three bullets in the shoulder.

For four hours the search had gone on. Troops had begun to despair and it was only the morale-boosting presence of so senior an officer as the Brigade Commander right behind the frontline troops that encouraged them to commence a re-search at 5 pm.

This time there was no getting away for Idris Khan. A civilian searcher8217;s hands running over the coal encountered a bunch of shaggy hair. He ran out to alert the troops. Within no time more than 150 troops threw a noose around the house before bombarding it with a grenade launcher and a daring CRPF officer delivering the coup de grace by chucking in explosives through a pulverised window. The body of Idris was pulled out of the rubble at 5.45 pm.