TWO BULLETS CAN’T KILL A COMMANDO!

Two Bullets Can’t Kill a Commando - Captain Jaidev Dangi

Tral, Jammu and Kashmir

19 June 2014

The commando smiled.

It was Ritu.

Her name blinked on his battered iPhone screen.

The two had exchanged rings 4 months before, on Valentine’s Day in 2014, as she had wanted. In 2 more months, he knew what would happen—he would be hoisted on to the shoulders of his comrades in his Para-SF unit and packed off to

rural Haryana to be married.

Ritu sat in her hostel room in Rohtak, waiting for the commando to pick up the phone. She would not disconnect until the phone had rung through. If he didn’t pick up, she knew he would call back.

From his team’s operating base in the terrorist haven of Tral in south Kashmir, Capt. Jaidev Dangi, 25 years old, always called back.

He swiped to accept the call. Capt. Dangi and Ritu had not known each other before they had been brought together by their families earlier that year. It had been awkward in person, and since Capt. Dangi had no choice but to rush back to Kashmir after the engagement ceremony, they had only come to know each

other over text messages and the daily phone call, which was sometimes as brief as a few seconds.

Capt. Dangi sounded relaxed that June evening, not something that Ritu got to hear often. She had found him calm enough not to ask about his work. Instead, she kept the conversation light, telling him what she had decided to wear for the wedding and the additions she was hoping to make to the guest list.

Capt. Dangi, who usually acknowledged every word she said with a sound, suddenly seemed distracted. Ritu found herself talking into a void. Something was amiss. The commando always gave her his full attention when he spoke to

her. All too soon, he cut in abruptly.

‘Ritu. Listen. I can’t talk. I will speak to you later. Don’t call back.’

He hung up. Ritu held the phone to her ear for a few seconds after it was disconnected. Was this what it was always going to be like? She waited for a few moments, staring out of her hostel window. Then she tapped out a text message and sent it: Call me when you’re free. Please take care.

The silence was new, but Ritu had been faced with Capt. Dangi’s hushed, distracted tone earlier. A month before, on 5 May, as the country braced itself for the big verdict of the national elections, her fiancé had fronted an operation that led to the killing of a Pakistani terrorist in a village near Tral. On that day too, he had cut their conversation short. Ritu knew that the man she was to marry was a soldier whose business was to hunt and kill terrorists. But that first time had made her blood run cold. It was something she would never quite get used to. Nor would Capt. Dangi’s family.

The commando jogged to the operations briefing room that evening on 19 June 2014. Capt. Dangi and his team of Para-SF warriors had returned to their base earlier that day from a different operation. And just as Capt. Dangi had begun to tentatively unwind over the phone with Ritu, a fresh intelligence input had alerted the team to the presence of a terrorist inside a house in Buchoo village, less than 10 km away.

As the team spilt out of their field headquarters, the distinct scent of eucalyptus floated through the mild summer breeze. Young Kashmiri boys were enjoying a game of cricket at the playground a stone’s throw away. The comforting sound of a ball against bats hewn from the willow trees abundant in the area resounded in the air.

The men did their final weapons check as an electric crackle passed through the team. Familiar to all soldiers, it is the frisson right before a hunt. Capt. Dangi stroked his full beard. Normally clean-shaven and boyish, the Capt. Dangi stroked his full beard. Normally clean-shaven and boyish, the lush growth on his face made the young commando look much older than his 25 years. Either way, it was crucial to his work. A beard helped conceal his identity as an outsider. There was now another incentive to keep it, though. Clean-shaven at his engagement, the commando had let his beard grow since, sending Ritu a stream of daily selfies that documented the steady shrouding of his sharp jawline with thick hair. Ritu reacted instantly. She forbade him to shave.

The hunt Capt. Dangi’s team had set off on that June evening was a special one. The commandos had been waiting for that particular intelligence input for months. Their body language was brimming with quiet excitement.

The man whose whereabouts had been discovered was no ordinary terrorist carrying an AK-47 and a few magazines. He had been prowling south Kashmir for several years and was far more wily and dangerous than the men Capt. Dangi’s team usually hunted down. It was Adil Ahmed Mir, a Hizbul Mujahideen area commander who the commandos had pursued unsuccessfully for several months. Adil had been mentor and trainer to Burhan Wani, then an upcoming social-media-savvy Hizbul commander, whose killing 2 years later in 2016 would plunge the Kashmir valley into a fresh cycle of bloodshed and turmoil.

Adil could not be allowed to slip through the net this time as he had several times in the past, to the intense frustration of the many teams that had been dispatched to capture him, dead or alive.

A Casspir mine-protected vehicle carrying the commandos rumbled off from Hardumir towards the location where Adil Mir was supposed to be hiding. The Hardumir company operating base offered a sweeping view of the area, including Buchoo village in the distance and the thick forest around it. Capt. Dangi quickly organized his thoughts. There was first a sense of disbelief that Mir had allowed himself to be spotted. Over 6 months, the terrorist had honed his skills of shaking his pursuers off into an art form. Capt. Dangi set everything else aside and focused his thoughts on the one thing he was certain of: Adil’s killing or capture would deal a crushing  blow to the Hizbul Mujahideen.

‘We were 99 per cent sure it was Adil Mir and 100 per cent sure we would get him,’ recalls Capt. Dangi. ‘My team was looking forward to the action as this is what we were trained for. It was our chance to get the slippery fellow. You

know, he never used a cell phone. He was so guarded.’

It was the height of summer and the sun would not disappear below the horizon for at least another 90 minutes, as the commandos sped towards the map location they’d been given.

As the Casspir rumbled swiftly past apple orchards, towering chinar trees and lush paddy fields, Capt. Dangi and his men conducted a quick tactical briefing. They made it to the spot in less than 10 minutes.

Capt. Dangi recalls the conversation he had with his men inside the vehicle.

‘Andhera hone se pehle operation khatam karna hai.’

He did not need to tell them twice. The men knew that this was likely to be their one final chance to get Adil Ahmed Mir before he truly disappeared before the winter months.

It was 1700 hours when Capt. Dangi’s 8-man squad reached Buchoo village with a team each of 3 Rashtriya Rifles and the J&K Police special operations group in tow. The intelligence input they had received was specific: it pointed to

the presence of only 1 terrorist, Adil Ahmed Mir himself, in the village. This would soon prove to be a dangerous miscalculation.

Stepping quietly out of their Casspir vehicle in daylight, a short distance outside the village, the team was faced with a fresh quandary. The intelligence input had failed to factor in a crucial point. The man in whose home Adil was supposedly present owned 3 adjoining houses in the same compound. If Adil was actually there, he could be in any of the 3 houses.

In a matter of seconds, finding Adil Ahmed Mir had become thrice as difficult.

The men were rapidly assigned their roles before they headed towards the compound with the 3 houses. The Rashtriya Rifles soldiers would lay a cordon in front of the compound. Capt. Dangi and his commando squad would position themselves behind the wall at the rear end of the complex.

The young officer’s instincts had told him that this was the escape route Adil was likeliest to take. Capt. Dangi and his 19-year-old buddy, Paratrooper Mukesh Kumar, took cover behind a eucalyptus tree with their Tavor TAR-21 assault rifles. They had chosen the spot for its unobstructed view of the compound’s backyard. The 2 men did another weapons check as the sun sank a little lower on the horizon.

Almost 800 km away, Ritu was sitting in her hostel room, a silent prayer on her lips.

The eucalyptus scent wasn’t just a familiar friend in the Kashmir valley. Capt. Dangi had grown up in Haryana’s Madina village, where towering eucalyptuses lined the edges of fields owned by his father, who had died when Capt. Dangi was still in school.

For a boy who did not know much about the Army when he was a teenager, and who was coaxed by his physics teacher to sign up, Capt. Dangi’s journey to Kashmir as a commando is an intriguing one. It was his instructor at the IMA, Maj. Kunal Rathi, who made him take the big step into the Paras. ‘If you want to do what you are being trained for, then come to Special Forces,’ the cadet had been told.

He had never regretted the decision.

Capt. Dangi and Mukesh strapped on their ballistic combat helmets. The remaining men had also formed pairs with their buddies and taken positions behind Capt. Dangi and Mukesh. This was to provide the lead pair cover, while sealing off alternative routes that could allow the terrorist to reach the stream and swim to the forest beyond. If he reached the forest, this mission was as good as dead.

The police team cautiously approached the entrance to the main house, ready to open fire if required. Seconds after they knocked on the door, Capt. Dangi spotted a well-built, bearded man in a pheran make a wild dash out the back

door.

Not only was this a suspicious move, it was plainly hostile and confirmed the intelligence input. Yet, standard protocol had to be followed. The commandos had to be absolutely sure that the man who had rushed out of the house was not a civilian. In an icy calm voice trained not to alarm, Capt. Dangi called out to the man, asking him to reveal his identity, remove his pheran and drop his weapon to the ground if he was carrying one.

‘You can surrender if you want to. There’s still time,’ Capt. Dangi warned. This routine drill during the conduct of counter-terrorism operations exposes soldiers to enormous additional risks. But nothing is more important to the Army than eliminating the possibility of collateral damage. Never mind if it increases

the chance of its own casualties, as it very often does.

The man did not respond to Capt. Dangi’s call.

Instead, he jumped across the compound’s back wall with the support of his left hand while the other grasped a now visible AK-47 assault rifle. As he landed on the ground 15 metres away from Capt. Dangi and Mukesh, the terrorist opened fire.

Dodging that first hail of bullets, the commando leaned towards Mukesh, ‘Iska khel khatam.’ The 2 men exchanged quick nods.

It is near impossible to describe the trust buddy pairs place in each other during operations. Placing their lives in each other’s hands forms the basis of the relationship. When a firefight breaks out, buddy pairs are not just working

towards eliminating an adversary; they also draw strength from and protect each other. It is a force multiplier system that creates the most basic human linkage at a tactical, instinctive and emotional level.

Right in front of them, the terrorist fired for 8 more seconds until he drained his first AK-47 magazine. Before he could reload his rifle, Capt. Dangi and Mukesh began their counter-fire, sending 6 single shots each from their TAR-

21s whizzing through the air and straight into the terrorist’s body, shredding him where he stood. The precision shots ensured swift death.

If the intelligence input was accurate, the mission had just been successfully completed—it lay in a bloody heap in front of the 2 lead commandos. And yet, somewhere in Capt. Dangi’s reptilian brain, he knew it couldn’t have been this easy. The men would know only moments later how the intelligence input had

really only scratched the surface.

‘We relaxed a bit for a few seconds thinking we had got our guy. But hell, we were wrong. Everything had only just begun,’ remembers Capt. Dangi.

Less than a minute after the first man was shot dead, 2 more terrorists sprang from the house they were hiding in and immediately opened fire at Capt. Dangi’s position. Firing their weapons on full automatic, the terrorists took the warriors by surprise. Not only had the intelligence input specified the presence of a single terrorist, the 2 men who had just emerged were not making any attempt to escape like the first one—they were in all-out attack mode.

It quickly dawned on the squad that the terrorists seemed to be following a well-thought-out plan. The first one stormed out of the house and made contact with the commandos. The ensuing firefight revealed the position Capt. Dangi and Mukesh were holding. The next 2 terrorists emerged by surprise to finish the commandos off.

At this point, Capt. Dangi and his squad did not know that 1 of the 2 men firing at them was Adil Ahmed Mir.

The man they had just shot dead was only a foot soldier—either Abdul Ahad Shah or Tariq Ahmad Parray of the Hizbul Mujahideen. But the 2 men now firing aggressively at them were doing so with a worrying level of skill.

‘The two were firing very accurately. They were extremely well-trained. The sheer intensity of the fire forced us to take cover with our heads down. We had to do something quickly,’ recalls Capt. Dangi. He remembers feeling a spasm of

anger at the abrupt turn of events that had put the commandos on the defensive. He felt a familiar dryness of the mouth as he wondered if the 2 terrorists would use their hail of fire from just 20 metres away to make a getaway. What he had not accounted for was actually taking a bullet while this happened.

The 2 terrorists had realized that they would need to get rid of Capt. Dangi and Mukesh, the lead pair, if they were to disappear into the tall grass and crawl down to the stream without being pursued. They were surrounded and that was the only exit route. By now, they were desperate to break out of the cordon laid

by the commandos to prevent their escape.

The trunk of the tree behind which Capt. Dangi and Mukesh had taken cover was not wide enough to shield them both. Sensing an opportunity to pin the commandos down, if not hit them directly, the terrorists began moving towards them, their rifles blazing non-stop.

Capt. Dangi felt a sudden stab of pain in his left thigh as a Kalashnikov bullet ripped through it. Immediately after, a second bullet pierced his abdomen on the side. Under the hail of ammunition, Capt. Dangi inspected his injuries for a moment, but quickly looked to his buddy. To his horror, Mukesh had sustained nearly identical injuries to the right side of his body.

‘It was only when I saw blood gushing from my wounds that I realized I had been shot. I was more worried about Mukesh as his injuries seemed to be worse. The tree trunk had covered our vital organs but some parts of our bodies were exposed,’ recalls Capt. Dangi.

He quickly checked Mukesh’s helmet. Fortunately, it was intact. No headshots. ‘Kuch nahi hua hai. Thodi si lagi hai You are alive. Stay that way,’ he told Mukesh.

It had been barely a year since Mukesh had enlisted in the Army, and Capt. Dangi knew his first gunshot wounds would shake him up more than a little. His battle fatigues soaked in blood, the pallor on Mukesh’s face showed that he

thought the end was near. Over the deafening crackle of fire drawing towards them, Capt. Dangi whispered to his buddy. Pointing to his own wounds, Capt. Dangi told him 2 bullets were not enough to kill a commando. Mukesh smiled weakly, with a thumbs-up gesture. He was losing blood rapidly.

Capt. Dangi quickly dragged Mukesh to a position behind the tree that made him less vulnerable to the incoming fire. He then signalled to one of the other soldiers holding ground behind them to crawl to their position to watch over the injured Mukesh.

As the commandos provided him covering fire, Naib Subedar Tribhuwan Singh crawled on his hands and knees to reach the wounded man. Tribhuwan knew what had to be done. Reaching Mukesh, he quickly put pressure on the man’s wounds with both hands to prevent further blood loss, telling him that the operation would be over soon and help was on its way. Mukesh’s face was deathly pale by now, his breathing more rapid.

Blood oozing from his own gunshot wounds, Capt. Dangi stuck his TAR-21 out from behind the tree and opened fire at the advancing terrorists. In the tense crossfire, the officer’s bullets hit one of the terrorists, sending him crashing to the ground.

It was Adil Ahmed Mir. But he wasn’t dead yet.

Just as Capt. Dangi was about to open a final burst at the fallen terrorist to finish him off, a bullet came whizzing through the air and hit his assault rifle, jamming it and rendering it useless.

A more devastating situation could not have transpired. Capt. Dangi was now holding nothing but a piece of metal composite in his hands in the middle of a firefight at 10 metres. And he didn’t have a moment to lose to think of

alternatives.

He swiftly bent over to pick up Mukesh’s weapon. Just then, the last standing terrorist decided to make a break for it, dashing full speed towards the tall grass about 30 metres away that led down to the stream behind Buchoo village. As he reached the grass, he dropped to his hands and knees and began crawling through it, trying to disappear in the undergrowth. Capt. Dangi checked the

magazine of his new weapon only to find that Mukesh had emptied it in the firefight. Quickly slamming a new magazine in, Capt. Dangi stepped out of his position to finish off Adil Ahmed Mir, who he had hit a moment ago.

Mir, lying a few metres away, had enough strength to swing his weapon forward and open a fresh burst of fire directly at the now fully exposed Capt. Dangi. A bullet grazed Capt. Dangi’s cheek. An inch to the right, and it would

have been a direct headshot that would have instantly killed the young officer. Thankfully the bullet had only opened Capt. Dangi’s skin, a mere trifle compared to the first 2 gunshot wounds.

That bullet was the last of the dying terrorist’s ammunition. Capt. Dangi stepped up quickly, pumping 10 rounds into him. Standing over him to make sure it was over, Capt. Dangi bent closer to take a look at the terrorist’s face.

‘Before I took the headshot, I recognized him. It was Adil.’

Ten metres behind, Tribhuwan was still tending to the injured Mukesh and was unable to engage the third terrorist who had fled towards the stream. Capt. Dangi, bleeding heavily and losing strength, refused to be shifted out of the

encounter site. Adil was dead, but this operation would be incomplete if the third

man escaped.

‘I didn’t mind bleeding a little more. I knew I could deal with it,’ Capt. Dangi recalls. ‘If this guy made it to the stream, there was no way we were going to get him, at least not that day.’

Capt. Dangi quietly moved in the direction where the terrorist had disappeared into the undergrowth. The large rucksack on his back gave the man’s location away.

‘I could see something moving. His rucksack blew his cover. It was sticking out as he crawled on his belly towards the stream.’

His limbs stiffening from the pain and blood loss, Capt. Dangi stepped on the grass, his weapon ready. But this time there would be no firefight as the young officer crept up on the terrorist and killed him in a quick burst of close-range fire. It was time for Capt. Dangi to take another headshot.

‘The third man didn’t put up a fight. His commander was dead and all he wanted to do was escape. He had lost the will. It made my job easier,’ says Capt. Dangi.

The officer did not stop to savour his victory. There were other priorities for now—Mukesh. Blood dripping to the ground, Capt. Dangi stumbled back to check on his buddy. Mukesh was still conscious.

‘Kaha tha na, do goliyan commando ko maarne ke liye kaafi nahi,’ Capt. Dangi grinned.

As the sun began its final descent, the two men smiled. From start to finish, the operation had lasted less than 20 minutes. From the time the first terrorist opened fire, till the time Capt. Dangi fired that final headshot, it had been just 8 minutes. The killing of Adil Ahmed Mir that evening in Buchoo village would be the definition of a lightning-quick operation. The 5 gunshot wounds suffered by 2 commandos were acceptable damage—every operation begins with the recognition that injuries are highly likely, if not fatal.

The Casspir vehicle carried the team back to its operating base in Hardumir where an Army helicopter was waiting to fly Capt. Dangi and Mukesh to the 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar.

In Rohtak, Ritu was close to panicking. Every passing minute had seemed like an eternity to her as she fought to keep away frightening thoughts. Like a good professional, Capt. Dangi had shared broad aspects of his work with his family, but never the specific details—as much for their own safety as his.

What Ritu did know was that her fiancé operated in south Kashmir. Unable to bear the worry any longer, she contacted a paramilitary officer also deployed in Tral. The officer was a friend of her cousin’s. It was through him that Ritu learnt of Capt. Dangi’s mission to hunt a deadly terrorist commander. That piece of

information was enough for Ritu to throw Capt. Dangi’s promise right out of the window—that he would call her back and not to worry. She began dialling his number repeatedly, but there was no response. The young commando’s phone happened to be with his team commander, a Major, who finally picked it up at

2100 hours.

Ritu felt her skin crawl. In a calm tone, the Major informed her that Capt. Dangi had suffered minor injuries in the operation and had been admitted to hospital. Ritu phoned nobody else that night, neither her family nor Capt.

Dangi’s mother. And she didn’t sleep. Through the night, she tried to contact Capt. Dangi, hoping his phone had somehow found its way back to him.

But it wasn’t until the next morning that she finally heard his voice.

Capt. Dangi’s CO and team commander arrived at the hospital to see him early on 20 June. The Major dialled Ritu’s number and handed the phone to Capt. Dangi.

‘I was too shy to speak to my fiancée in the presence of my CO and the team commander. I just told her I would speak to her after 2 days. She was silent. She wanted to talk. But she understood the situation I was in,’ he says.

Their wedding had to be postponed from August to December as Capt. Dangi’s injuries needed time to heal. Both commandos were discharged from the base hospital after 3 weeks.

Six months later, Capt. Jaidev Dangi was awarded India’s second highest peacetime gallantry award, the Kirti Chakra, on 25 January 2015 for showing ‘dauntless courage and extraordinary valour under heavy fire from close quarters in face of certain death.’ The award citation would note that ‘despite his near fatal injuries, the officer refused to be evacuated till the termination of operations’.

He would receive the award from the President of India at the Rashtrapati Bhawan on 21 March 2015. With him was Ritu, his bride of 3 months, his mother and his best friend, Capt. Pradeep Balhara of a sister SF unit.

Capt. Dangi’s example has inspired many in and around Haryana’s Madina village to join the military.

‘Jaidev was the first boy from our school to join the NDA,’ says Ravinder Dangi, director at the Ramakrishna Paramhansa Senior Secondary School where Capt. Dangi had studied. ‘But now a steady stream of students joins the academy

every year following in his footsteps. He will remain an inspiration for current and future generations of students.’

School friends talk fondly of Jaidev, who still meets them on the rare occasion that he has time off from his duties. They remember how he once limped to school with his foot in a plaster cast as he did not want to miss classes.

‘I told him to take leave and rest. I loved his answer. He said he would rather sit in class than sit at home,’ the school director says.

After the Buchoo operation, Capt. Dangi entered a Para refresher course that commandos have to undergo every year to hone their skills. It was during the toil of this course that Capt. Dangi would receive news about the gallantry

decoration the recently elected Narendra Modi government had decided to pin on him.

‘No words can explain the joy and pride I felt when I was told I had been awarded the Kirti Chakra. I had never imagined in my dreams that I would come so far in life,’ says Capt. Dangi.

The operation that killed Adil Ahmed Mir would be the first major SF win in Kashmir under the new Modi government, barely a month old at the time. It would become a touchstone referred to by the country’s security top brass as India’s Parachute Regiment units prepared for devastatingly more ambitious operations in the months that followed. 

SF officers rarely have time for leisure or other interests. In Capt. Dangi’s case, the binding nature of his work allows him hobbies not far removed from his professional duties. In the little spare time that Capt. Dangi gets, he pursues interests deeply related to the profession he has chosen for himself. He likes to fire different types of weapons, research tactics employed by global special operations units and read about military leaders. Mongol leader Genghis Khan, who rose from humble beginnings to carve out the largest empire in history, tops his list of favourites. 

Capt. Dangi’s beard was shaved off at the hospital to treat the wound on his cheek. As they cleaned him up, he remembers the mixed feelings he had at the time.

‘Ritu really loved that beard. I would have to grow it back really fast,’ he remembers.

Following the operation in south Kashmir, Capt. Dangi was posted as an instructor at the NDA outside Pune, where cadets, like he once was, prepare for a military career. At the time, the young officer was waiting to complete the posting and return to the Kashmir valley to do what he likes the most.

Hunt.