KnowYourHeroes
21/03/2021
A young boy who dreamt to don the maroon beret, infracting his parent's desire, goes on to serve in the Indian Army. Filled with pluck, sheer valor, a man who sipped tea with the Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists, this is the story of 1 Para Special Forces Officer, Ashoka Chakra awardee Major Mohit Sharma aka "Iftikhar Bhatt"
Born on 13 January 1978 in Rohtak, Haryana in a Sharma Family was Mohit Sharma. He was the second child of his parents Shri Rajendra Prasad and Shrimati Sushila Sharma, being younger of the two brothers, he was a pampered child of the family. Fondly nicknamed "Chintu" by his brother Madhur Sharma and "Mike" by his friends and course-mates, Mohit was a typical Delhi boy, thorough Michael Jackson fan who loved to sing, play, listen to songs and had a keen interest in learning musical instruments.
He loved playing guitar & mouth organ and would never shy away from showcasing his vocals and skills.
Mohit dreamt of being in the elite forces from an early age and was all determined to join the Indian Army however his parents didn't approve of his life goals. The reason being, the elder brother Madhur who academically brighter than Mohit wanted to join the Indian Army but didn't have any luck in 3 SSBs and finally settled with engineering, Mohit's parents wanted him too to not waste time and focus on getting a degree from engineering college and settle in the national capital. Mohit Sharma aged 17, got into an engineering college in Shegaon, Maharashtra. ‘He took admission, but from the start, it was clear he did not plan to stay,’ says Madhur(Mohit's elder brother).
Little did his parents know that Mohit had already given the NDA entrance exam before leaving for his college. When the written exam results were declared by UPSC, his parents didn't tell him about his clearance, suspicious Mohit then called on to UPSC directly to know the results. Without telling his parents he boarded the train to Bhopal for appearing in his SSB interview. Followed was his medical examination in Delhi, he packed his bags and called on his parents to tell them that he is coming to Delhi and would never be back to his engineering college. Father Rajendra was ticked off, but he knew Mohit wouldn't chuck the decision to join Army. He was found 4 kg underweight in medicals, however, it wasn't a hard job for his mother, she helped him gain 8 kgs in 4 weeks. He was all set to join the National Defence Academy in Pune in the year 1995.
During his training in NDA, he was in the India squadron and emerged as one of the best cadets. He was a brilliant horse-rider, prolific swimmer, and featherweight boxing champion in NDA.
He continued his hunger for excellence in Indian Military Academy(IMA), Dehradun in the year 1999, and was appointed as BCA(Battalion Cadet Adjutant) and he was also among the chosen ones to meet the then President of India Shri K R Narayanan at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
While he was at IMA, India was fighting the Kargil War with Pakistan, an intense skirmish that had put both countries on a knife-edge. all the course-mates would gather in the common room to watch the evening news. Listening to the news coming from Kargil and Dras, all the trainee cadets would be infused with anger, they were eager to go on to the field and serve the nation in such an insurgency. Years earlier when Mohit's brother asked him, which arm of the military he wanted to join, Mohit prompted without a pause, 'Infantry, what else is there?'
On 11 December 1999, Lieutenant Mohit Sharma was commissioned into the 5th Battalion of the Madras Regiment, one of the Army’s oldest infantry regiments, which dated back to the eighteenth century and had the famous war cry ‘Veera Madrasi, adi kollu, adi kollu (Brave Madrasi, hit and kill, hit and kill)!’
During the celebrations and revelry on his commissioning night, Mohit was asked by one of his coursemates, where he was hoping to be sent, he replied, 'Anywhere I can hit and kill terrorists,' very true to his regiment's war cry. ‘Get yourself into the Special Forces, then,’ his coursemate said. ‘If that’s what you’re looking for, that’s the knife-edge.’ Mohit clinked glasses with him and said, ‘That’s the plan. I’ll get there.'
He didn't have to wait for long, 5 months into his commission, in the mid-2000 Mohit's unit was sent to the Poonch-Rajouri sector to operate under 38 Rashtriya Rifles(RR) counter-insurgency force. He was then operating in the most challenging sectors along LOC and frequently worked alongside the Officers and the soldiers of the Army's Para Special Forces units. Lt Mohit Sharma was taking on the full-blown terrorist hunt, high altitude cordon-and-search missions with the greatest of eagerness.
In December 2001, after the Parliament attack, India and Pakistan were on a massive 5-month standoff with high mobilization of troops, artillery, tanks, and other weaponry to the forward posts of the LOC, this was one of the major standoffs since the two countries had gone nuclear three years earlier. India code-named this mobilization as 'Operation Parakaram'. On the threshold of war, Lt Mohit Sharma was on Cordon and Search Operations(CASO) in the Poonch-Mendhar Road working alongside Special Forces in early 2002. During a break from the Operation, Mohit asked the officer if he had a chance with the Special Forces. The officer’s reply was all the validation he needed at the time. ‘Bhai, dekh, I’ve seen absolute beasts of men come and fail to make the cut. And I’ve seen seemingly unimpressive guys come and nail it better than anyone. So what I’m saying is, there is only one way to find out.’
Weeks later Mohit received his first recognition, a Chief of Army Staff Commendation from the then Army Chief, General Sundararajan Padmanabhan, for leading counter-insurgency in the Poonch- Rajouri sector.
In June 2003, after being rejected in his first attempt in the Special Forces Probation due to illness, Captain Mohit Sharma was welcomed into the 1 Para Special Forces Unit.
Brigadier Vinod Kumar Nambiar, then a younger officer with the unit and later its Commanding Officer (CO), remembers the time clearly.
‘Mohit had come for Special Force's probation to 1 Para. He didn’t get selected initially because he was unwell. And when we turned him away, he said he would be back. Normally, people give up. Probation breaks you. But Mohit recovered his strength and came back to the same unit again. So his feeling for 1 Para was very strong.
He had the humility to come back
despite being rejected in his first attempt. Any normal person would hesitate a bit about going back to the same unit for a probation attempt. He could have volunteered for another battalion, to avoid being rejected twice by the same people. To me, that was the determination aspect of it. Not afraid of failures and not afraid to come back to the same challenge. It also showed his love and affinity for 1 Para “ki kuch bhi ho jaaye, I will come back to the same unit.”
Getting to wear the maroon beret and the Balidan badge was all young Mohit had dreamt of, it was the sole reflection of his sheer determination and bravery which he showed time-to-time not only on the battlefield but also during training.
Undercover Mission, somewhere in Shopian, Kashmir, mid-2003
It was in the year 2003 when two Hizbul Mujahideen recruiters Abu Sabjar and Abu Torara(war names) were under the Indian Army's radar, these two Hizbul terrorists were working on recruiting more and more Kashmiris to attack the Indian Army's convoys. One such attack had taken place in May 2002, three terrorists infiltrated the LOC, boarded on a bus in Jammu's Vijay Pura, and attacked the Armymen and their families at their living quarters in Kaluchak. This incident had a devastating effect on Mohit, On a phone call with his coursemate he told, 'he has lost the ability to sleep, how could the terrorists bring themselves to do fire at toddlers'. He was definitely angered, looking for an opportunity to seek avenge. In the year 2003, he volunteered to go inside the Hizbul Mujahideen camp and kill the commanding recruiters.
A young Kashmiri lad with shoulder-length hair, wearing the Kashmiri Pheran going by the name 'Iftikhar Bhatt' approached the dreaded Hizbul Mujahideen in Shopian, Kashmir sometime during 2003. When asked by Hizbul recruiters why he wanted to fight the Indian Army, Iftikhar told, Indian Army was responsible for his brother's death during a stone-pelting incident, he was there to seek help from Abu Sabjar and Abu Tarora to avenge his brother's death. Unlike other recruits, this lad showed great enthusiasm and religious zeal and therefore was marked for further leadership and training. He stood out from rest, he showed hand-drawn maps and Indian Army's convoy, post locations, impressed by Iftikhar, recruiters sent him to Pakistan for further training in Hizbul camp.
A few weeks later, he was finally given a chance to cross LOC and attack on Indian Army Outposts. In an unprecedented move, he was directly deputed by Abu Sabjar and Abu Torar. Iftikhar convinced both of them that he would carry on an accurate attack on the Indian Army, however, Abu Sabjar had a doubt on how this young guy could plan an attack so meticulously, so he started asking questions and about his back story. Sensing the distrust Iftikhar gave his AK-47 to Abu Sabjar and said that they can shoot him if they don't trust him and moved back a couple of steps and pulled out concealed 9mm pistol and shot them, Two to the chest and one to the head, a hallmark of the Para SF. Picking up his weapons, Iftikhar Bhatt walked to the nearest Army camp.
This mission was a tell-tale in the Para SF, Iftikhar Bhatt had immortalized himself.
Back at his field base before dawn the following day, another officer in the unit would quip at breakfast, ‘You know, Mohit, with that look you’ve got there, you’ll probably end up getting captured or killed by the Army itself while you’re on your next covert mission.’ Mohit had replied, ‘Killed, maybe. But I’ll never get caught.’
Mohit's mother was always worried about his son's deployment in the J&K but this time Mohit had news that would calm his mother. Mohit was moving to Chandimandir, headquarters of the western command on the outskirts of Chandigarh, to take charge as Para SF team leader. In Chandimandir, Mohit met the love of his life, Captain Rishma Sareen, an Officer with the Army Services Corps(ASC).
Rishma had known very little about this dreaded mission of Mohit, ‘He did share that story with me a few weeks later when he came to see me,’ says Rishma, now a Lieutenant Colonel in the Indian Army.
‘The story shocked me—it would have scared anyone. I asked him to please be careful. I mean, I knew for sure that he was very good at what he did. I knew he planned everything very well. He was very meticulous by nature. He was professionally very sound. So I didn’t panic, but I did ask him to be careful.’
Mohit and Rishma married on 19 November 2004 in Chandigarh. Two months later, Mohit was deployed to Belgaum in Karnataka, followed by two years posting in Nahan in the Hills of Himachal Pradesh, the home base of 1 Para SF and Indian Army's Special Forces Training School(SFTS). He would drive every weekend for two hours to meet his wife who was posted in Patiala. Meanwhile, he was honored with Sena Medal(SM) for his gallant in the J&K missions.
Mohit's training in Nahan was pointed towards the only thing that his parents dreaded, In October 2008, Mohit now a Major was summoned back to Kashmir, over the next 5 months, Major Mohit and his team would be crawling in the toughest of the weather and carrying out various operations.
In the spring of 2009, when the snow had started to melt, Maj. Mohit and his team were at their base in Kupwara. It was the afternoon of 20 March. His buddy, 1 Havildar Rajeev Kumar, then twenty-two years old and holding the rank of Paratrooper, remembers it like it was yesterday,
‘I remember the sequence of events very clearly. We were being briefed by our team leader, Maj. Mohit, at our base in the Kupwara sector about an anti-terror operation to be conducted in Bangus Valley. 2 Mohit Sir had a solid network of informants and he had received some intelligence about terrorist activity in that area. We were deployed in Kupwara with 7 Sector, RR. While Maj. Sir briefed us, he got a call from the Sector Commander. We knew it was an important call because he cut the briefing short. The Sector Commander told Mohit Sir that a terror squad had crossed the LoC and was hiding in the dense Haphruda forest. Our team leader told us that the Bangus operation was no longer on and we would all be proceeding towards Haphruda instead.’
Mohit was briefed about the operation by the CO of 6RR, few terrorists had escaped the 6 RR teams net, and wandered deep in the Haphurda forest, the task was clear Mohit's team had to take down the terrorists who infiltrated the LOC. However, the exact position and number of terrorists was sketchy.
‘Woh jungle itna bada hai ki kuch pata nahin woh kahan chhupe ho sakte the'
-1 Havildar Rajeev Kumar
The ground was covered completely with a sheet of snow, Major Mohit then split his team into three squads and followed the footsteps.
‘It appeared that the terrorists following the lead terrorist were deliberately stepping right into his footmarks and moving forward, so it was difficult to even guess how many terrorists we were hunting that day. A small thing, but a pointer to how well they were trained to evade us.’
Moving forward the team had spotted the terrorist, Major Mohit relayed on the radio that the terrorists were spotted and soon radioed that they were spotted by terrorists too. Major Mohit's team came under enormous fire from all sides, everyone took shelter behind the trees or the boulders when the team tried to cover the firing from the left, one paratrooper was shot in the head. The terrorist firings got more and more accurate, the intensity was enormous as if there was a whole pack of them firing at once. The terrorists had spread in a C-shape and rained their 7.62×39mm AK-47 bullets on Major Mohit Sharma and team, One more paratrooper got hit in his thighs, slit opening his legs. With one man down and the other heavily injured, Major Mohit Sharma quickly realized that the vulnerability had gone up several notches.
‘The terrorists clearly had the better position,’ says Havildar Rajeev. ‘I asked Mohit Sir to move back and take cover, but he kept firing and said he would stay right there and engage the terrorists so that other squad members could move back and take cover. I said, “Sahab, aap pehle cover lo. Main inko sambhalta hoon (Sahab, you take cover first. I will handle them).” But Mohit Sir said, “Main nahin, tum jao. Main last mein aaoonga (Not me, you take cover. I’ll take cover in the end)."'
As Major was providing cover fire for his team pulling back, a bullet tore open his left arm, he was severely injured. Major Mohit Sharma still pelting bullets towards terrorists, ordered one of his buddies to fire MGL(Multi-Grenade Launcher). But as the paratrooper aimed the launcher, a grenade fell near him. He was in no position to fire the MGL so Major himself took the MGL and started launching it deep towards terrorists. Just then a bullet hit him right in the left of his chest, Major Mohit turned pale from blood loss but kept on his feet firing at the terrorists. "Keep firing at them. We cannot let them get away today" Major Mohit kept motivating his troops.
‘Firing rukni nahi chahiye. Hum issi ke liye SF [Special Forces] mein hain aur issi ke liye train karte hain (Don’t stop firing. We joined the SF [Special Forces] for this and this is what we train for day in and day out).’
Major Mohit took cover and sat behind a tree. At 4 p.m., Havildar Rajeev managed to reach his team leader, still seated with his back to the tree, clutching his weapon. Maj. Mohit had bled out and wasn’t breathing any longer. The magazine in his rifle was empty. Along with Maj. Mohit and three from his squad, a total of eight Special Forces men were killed in the Haphruda operation, which continued for four more days, till 25 March. A total of twelve terrorists would be killed in the operation.
Major Mohit Sharma was taken to 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar but he did not make it.
Havildar Rajeev recalls,
"Carrying Mohit Sir that day to the helicopter is the heaviest burden I have ever carried."
At 1 a.m., in Ghaziabad, the phone rang at the Sharma residence. Maj. Mohit’s father answered the call. ‘Two officers were at the other end of the line, saying they wanted to visit us,’ says Rajender Sharma(Father of Mohit Sharma). ‘I woke Mohit’s mother and shared this with her. She found it strange that Mohit’s friends were coming over this late and that Mohit had not informed us. She felt there was something amiss. Then we called his wife, Rishma, who was in Patiala at the time. His colleague Maj. Bhaskar Tomar took the call but didn’t tell us, despite knowing what had happened. Half an hour later, the two officers arrived at our house. They shared the news with us eventually.’
Every 21 March, Maj. Mohit’s unit observes a two-minute silence in his memory and of those who died with him.‘He never made us feel he was our senior. He treated us as equals. In fact, that’s the culture of 1 Para, officers and soldiers intermingle a lot. Eat together, live together, stay together, fight together.’
On 15 August 2009, Major Rishma Sharma received his husband Major Mohit Sharma's Ashoka Chakra, India's Highest Peacetime gallantry award.
Maj. Rishma Sharma says,
'He would never disclose those things. He only said he would not be available on the phone for some time, and I understood he was out there doing what he liked most—conducting an operation. He was to come home on leave in a week’s time, around the end of March. He had delayed his own leave as he wanted his team’s officers and men to be able to visit their homes on Holi. He was very concerned about them. He used to consider them at par with family. He postponed his own leave. We had bought a house in Noida and were planning to take possession during Mohit’s leave. These ten years have definitely been difficult. And every single day, I have thought of Mohit and missed him. I miss the songs he would sing to me with his guitar. His two favorites to sing to me were “Pal pal dil ke paas ” and “Pyar humein kis mod pe le aaya ”. The love we had for each other gives me immense strength. He was the best. There can be nobody else like him. When you have been with the best, you just can’t think of anything else. I miss him. He was a happy guy. The rage and aggression would surface only when he was conducting operations.'
Before he set out for the Shopian operation in March 2004, a soldier remembers hearing another officer call Mohit by his name. Mohit turned around, his bushy beard and hair covered in a checked scarf. ‘Mohit nahin, Sir, Iftikhar .’
A true Hero and an inspiration to many. A Salute to Maj. Mohit Sharma!!
Extraordinary!! 🇮🇳❤ A salute to Maj. Mohit Sharma!!
Nice work 👌