According to an account from a fellow officer, Maj. Rajesh Singh Adhikari of 18 Grenadiers had just received a letter from his wife Kiran whom he had married just ten months ago. It was a letter he decided to read in peace after the completion of the operation; alas a letter he was destined never to read at all because he never came back alive from the Battle of Tololing on the fateful night in May 1999. For the bereaved mother of this soldier from Nainital, he was someone who loved river rafting and playing Hindi oldies on his guitar; unfortunately he was also someone cut down in the prime of his life as he made the ultimate sacrifice for his country.
Maj. Rajesh Singh Adhikari – One of the earliest losses of the Kargil War
Among the many teams involved in the recapture of the various bunkers atop the peaks of the Tololing feature in Drass, Maj. Rajesh Singh Adhikari of the 18 Grenadiers, mechanized infantry unit headed the central column tasked with recapturing the enemy’s heavily fortified forward position. Leading from the front, the major and his men used pickaxes and ropes to close in for the assault. A few meters ahead of his men, he was hit in the chest but refused to be evacuated. Instead, he directed the rocket launcher division to engage with the bunkers while he charged into the bunker to engage with the enemy in hand to hand combat. He neutralized several of the enemy and continued to direct his company to inflict the most damage from behind a rocky outcrop.
Though the major himself fell to his death metres short of his objective, he made it possible for this company to plough on and achieve the final objective. The major was only the second officer to be killed on the Kargil battlefield but not before he had wrested a significant victory from infiltrators.
Maj. Rajesh Singh Adhikari was awarded the Maha Vir Chakra posthumously
On 15th August 1999, the major was awarded the nation’s second highest gallantry award, the Maha Vir Chakra. When he fell on the icy and forbidding crags of Drass, it was a while before the major’s body was recovered. For a while, his family still had a hope of hope that he may have survived because his body had not been found. However the major’s body was finally recovered and sent back to an inconsolable family back in Nainital where he was bid a final farewell beside the river Gola in July 1999.
Author – Reena Daruwalla
This article is a part of a series on the brave hearts of the Kargil War – these are heroes India has either forgotten about or has never heard of. This series is our tribute to our country’s men and women in uniform ahead of Kargil Divas (26 July)
