CHANDIGARH: Close-quarter battles produce the strangest and, sometimes, the most humane of interactions between battling men.Known as a chain smoker and the veritable ‘Marlboro Man’ of his battalion, Maj Deep K Pathak had survived the ultra-stress and rigours of Siachen glacier virtually on cigarettes having fought weather, terrain, enemy and less food relying on timely and comforting drags.
When his battalion, the 12 JAK Light Infantry (LI), got inducted into the Batalik LOC sector of the Kargil war immediately after the Siachen tenure, Maj Pathak’s Charlie company was tasked to assault the Point 4812 Complex (15,700 feet) from the north. Running out of rations having been deployed at high-altitude for days, the worrisome fact for Maj Pathak, personally, was that he had finished his cigarettes!
The Point 4812 battle was raging from July 1-3, 1999, eventually leaving nine Indian soldiers and an officer dead while the Pakistanis lost 26 men. And, then, a miracle came flashing, from out of the blue. Under Maj Pathak’s command, Charlie company captured the first of the eight prisoners of war (POWs) of the Kargil war on July 3, 1999. Naik Inayat Ali of the 5 Northern Light Infantry (NLI), who had reached Point 4812 on June 28, 1999, was nabbed as he tried to escape the tightening noose of the Indian Army. The POW was by chance carrying three cigarette packs.
An elated Maj Pathak, while sniffing the captured Pakistani cigarettes with the elan of a Scotch sommelier, told the POW that Indian cigarettes were of “much better quality” and he would “soon get a chance to savour them”! The three Pakistan cigarette packs served a battling Maj Pathak’s needs and under his command Charlie company won a Vir Chakra and a Sena Medal (Gallantry) for the Point 4812 battle having destroyed four bunkers.
“Ali had just joined his battalion at Point 4812 and was having three packets of cigarettes on him as he had come from the base across the LOC. Maj Pathak took the three packets from him and promised him that these would be honourably returned when he was sent down to the base. True to his word, when the POW came down under escort of the troops, Maj. Pathak bought three packets of Indian cigarettes from the battalion’s shop and gave them to Ali. The first POW was very important for India to prove the Pakistan Army’s involvement in the Kargil intrusion, as he was not a mujahid. So, I was told by higher HQs to ensure Ali reaches safely for interrogation or my head will be on the line,” then CO of 12 JAK LI, Col. VS Bhalothia (retd), Sena Medal (Gallantry), told TOI.
Ali and five other POWs were captured from the Batalik sector while two more were nabbed from the Drass operations. Originally commissioned into the 9 NLI with enrollment number, 2837712, Ali had volunteered for a tenure with the 5 NLI in June 1998 to earn some extra bucks in the form of the “Northern Area Allowances” given to soldiers serving in battalions deployed in forward LOC areas. Apart from relishing the Indian cigarettes, Ali was profoundly grateful he had been captured alive and treated honourably by the Indian Army.
Having not gone home on leave for the last 18 months, he was just days away from retirement in July 1999. But the luckless soldier had been pushed into battle across the LOC by the then CO of 5 NLI, Lt. Col. Mohammad Tariq, as the 5 NLI had suffered 200 casualties. Hailing from Sandush village, Skardu, Ali had left behind his wife Jahan Ara (then aged 28 years), daughters, Fatima and Noorjahan (10 and 6), and sons, Mohammed Jahir and Ali Raja (8 and 3). In his interview broadcast from India to show the world the truth of the Pakistani intrusion, a grateful Ali stated: “I want to convey back home that I am not dead. Otherwise, my wife will think that I have gone missing and I am dead and will marry someone else. Then who will look after my little children?”
