Advance Praise for the Book

‘The book is a powerful narration of the life and times of

General Bipin Rawat, the man in and out of uniform. A strict
disciplinarian in o ce, he was equally warm-hearted and
sociable out of it. This chronicle of memories is a poignant
reminder of the collective loss that the nation and the services
su ered on that fateful day of December 202 1’— General M.M.
Naravane (retired), 28th Chief of the Army Sta
‘Writing an objective biography of a person who has held
sensitive public appointments and a person known to you is
most di cult. It is di cult to remain objective, bringing out the
true character, shortcomings, achievements and failures of the
subject. In Bipin: The Man behind the Uniform, Rachna has
done a brilliant job. With her deep research, and many
interviews with relations, friends and associates of Bipin Rawat,
she brings out an interesting, most objective life story of India’s
rst Chief of Defence Sta . Her eye for detail and ability to catch
and describe the emotions of her interviewees is remarkable.
Rachna is a master storyteller on military life. The book is a racy
narrative… Very, very readable!’—General V.P. Malik, former
Chief of the Army Sta
‘A riveting story on the life of General Bipin Rawat, from the
inspiring pen of Rachna Bisht, that makes me wonder whether
“destiny is a matter of choice or a matter of chance”. General
Bipin Rawat believed in doing what is right, irrespective of the
consequences, and that, to me, is the message of his life. A
must-read for every citizen of India and the world’—Mgj. Gen.
Ian Cardozo, AVSM, SM
 BIPIN
THE MAN BEHIND THE
UNIFORM

RACHNA BISHT RAWAT

 For all those serving in the armed forces
and those yet to join, so that you may know
your first Chief of Defence Staff better
In early 1978, a slim and medium-built Gentleman
Cadet at the Indian Military Academy, whom no
one had noticed before, was being brutally
thrashed by his much stronger opponent in the
boxing ring. Bleeding profusely from the nose and
mouth, bout after bout, he refused to give up and
eventually went on to win. Surprised spectators
wanted to know who the boy was.
It was the shy and reticent Gentleman Cadet Bipin
Rawat, of Zojila Company, who went on to become
India’s rst Chief of Defence Sta .
This is his story.
 Contents

Advance Praise for the Book

Title Page
Dedication
Brief Intro
Contents
Foreword : Salutations, Dear Friends, Bipin and Madhu…
Introduction
Prologue : Radio Silence

1 : ‘Chal, Chhotu, Bhaag!’

2 : ‘Hello! My Name Is Bipin. Can I Sit Next to You?’
3 : The Pretty New Class Teacher
4 : A Chopper Crash He Survived
5 : ‘Hum Sab Fauj Mein Jayenge’
6 : Bipin Joins the NDA
7 : Bloody-Nosed in the IMA Boxing Ring
8 : Ayo Gorkhali!
9 : The Bachelor with Gentle Brown Eyes
10 : Like Father, Like Son
11 : ‘I’m Here with a Marriage Proposal’
12 : Dancing on a Plastered Leg, under the Enemy’s Nose
13 : ‘Zyada Peene Se Sehat Kharab Hoti Hai’
 14 : Standing Up for His Battalion Commander
15 : ‘Unrest Was at Its Peak When He Came to Congo’
16 : A Man in a Hurry
17 : A Reluctant Colonel Commandant
17 : The Reluctant Colonel of the Regiment
18 : Not a Man to Take Things Lying Down
19 : A General Who Stood by His Men
20 : When a Soldier Asked the Army Chief to Prove His
Identity
21 : ‘Impress Me with Work, Not Gifts’
22 : ‘He Was Garhwal’s Hope for a Better Future’
23 : ‘My Father Was a Simple Man’
24 : ‘Sahab Ko Toh Aaj Hero Ban Ke Hi Jana Hai’
25 : ‘Hum Ja Rahe Hain, Beta’: Tarini’s Last Memory

Epilogue
A Few Good Men
Acknowledgements
Photograph
THE BEGINNING
Copyright
 Foreword
Salutations, Dear Friends,
Bipin and Madhu…

As crystal a memory can be, on 4 December 2021, in 5/11

Gorkha Ri es at Shanker Vihar, Bipin, Madhu, Payal and I were
foreseeing ourselves sitting on rocking chairs next to a bon re
in Dehradun in our twilight years. It was not to be! On that
fateful day, Madhu (though many of her friends called her
Maddy, I could never do so) sent a picture with the unit Subedar
Major on WhatsApp, saying, ‘Will call you in the evening.’ That
evening was not to come. There were plans and plans that went
a-begging.
There are memories and memories, some so trivial that they
do not merit recounting! At exercises, Utpal Roy, Durgaprasad,
Bipin and I invariably carried ‘lotas’ together for morning calls.
Unimaginable today. I recollect that while doing pre-course
training of 81 mm Mortars in 9 DOGRA, in US Club, Colaba, we
suddenly heard the renowned baritone of Raaj Kumar, the
famous actor, who was playing golf there. We asked the NCO
instructor permission to go and shake hands with the actor.
The instructor was so annoyed that he made us both lift up a
base plate each and go around the green on which Raaj Kumar
was putting. The actor saw us and gave a hearty laugh, and we
were embarrassed like hell! Of course, we shook hands, and he
obliged us by saying ‘jaani’ in his inimitable way.
 Indeed, Bipin and I had di erences, and some discussions
sounded as if on the warpath! We di ered and agreed in equal
measure, discussed every known issue or personality
threadbare. That was the strength of our relationship, always. It
was a relationship that cannot have a suitable adjective!
We visited each other at all our postings and at homes. Gen.
and Mrs Lakshman Rawat were blessed to have Bipin and
Madhu looking after them through their lives so well, at Arun
Vihar, Noida. I recall Gen. Lakshman Rawat at the Flag Sta
House at Baramulla, when Bipin was commanding the Division;
this was the same house that Gen. Lakshman Rawat had
occupied in the early ’80s.
I have not seen in my life the kind of recognition that Bipin
and Madhu got in their demise, at 3 Kamraj Road, with swelling
crowds, serpentine queues of the public at large, and people
running along the cortége to Brar Square for the last rites. The
Delhi-Haridwar road was lined with people with owers as we
were on our way with the last remains. And Haridwar itself!
Such recognition comes to the ‘rarest of the rare’, and I recollect
writing that phrase in the only con dential report that I had the
greatest of privilege writing on Bipin, as my Second-in-
Command.
Rachna Bisht Rawat has been most persuasive and forceful in
putting together the life of Bipin, in her inimitable way. When
we rst met, I recollect mentioning to her, ‘Do justice to my
dearest friends. Anything short of that will be unacceptable to
me!’ The outcome is an eminently readable book; the best
compliment is that the rst read moistened my eyes.
Bipin and Madhu went so early, leaving indelible memories.
So long, dear friends, till we meet again.
 Lt Gen. Rakesh Sharma
Former Adjutant-General Gen. Bipin Rawat
Chair of Excellence, USI Distinguished Fellow,
Vivekananda International Foundation
 Introduction

In August 2019, when the nation was commemorating the

twentieth anniversary of Operation Vijay, popularly known as
the Kargil war, I went to the South Block, Central Secretariat, at
Raisina Hill in Delhi, to gift the then Chief of Army Sta ,
General Bipin Rawat, a copy of my book Kargil.
Accompanied by my editor Gurveen Chadha and son,
Saransh, I stood in the meeting room, with all the twenty- ve
previous Chiefs of the Indian Army looking down at me—
stately and digni ed, each one of them capable of making
authors nervous with their gaze, even if it only came from a
portrait on the wall. Two beautiful paintings—marking India’s
two historic war victories, 1971 and Kargil— adorned facing
walls. We were still looking around when the General walked in,
perfectly on time, looking distinguished in his olive-green
uniform.
Casual and smiling, he reached out to shake hands with me,
with Gurveen and with Saransh, who was then a rebellious
teenager and had absolutely refused to get his long hair cut for
this meeting, despite repeated calls from his Army o cer dad to
do so. Manoj was posted in Allahabad those days and was
horri ed by the thought of his son going to meet his Chief with
untidy hair.
I apologized to Gen. Rawat for Saransh’s hair, but he just
looked at Saransh and inquired, ‘Do you want to join the Army,
young man?”
 ‘No, sir. I want to be a commercial pilot.’
This from a boy who belongs to a family that has given
generations of soldiers. I cringed.
But Gen. Rawat’s smile stayed as warm. ‘That is perfectly ne.
Not everybody needs to join the Army or keep their hair short.
All the best to you,’ he said, winning over a teenage fan right
away.
We had been told that the Chief was following avery tight
schedule and could give us just ten minutes, which should be
enough for a quick photo shoot, where he would accept a copy
of the book from me. Not only did he do that, but he also
helpfully suggested that we stand under the painting of soldiers
hoisting the national ag on a captured peak in Kargil; and he
sat down next to me, looking relaxed and unhurried as he asked
questions about the book and the people I had interviewed.
Since he appeared so approachable, I asked him to verify a
story I had heard about him: about how he had recently been
stopped by a young soldier on guard duty in the cantonment
(when he had been driving his own car) and asked to show his
ID card. He laughed and assured me it was true, and added, ‘He
was just doing his job. And doing it well.’
He then told us about a helicopter crash he had survived in
Dimapur: the helicopter he was travelling in as Corps
Commander had developed a snag and crashed soon after
lifting o . He said that all he had su ered were a few cuts and
bruises. All those present in the room that day marvelled at the
story of his miraculous escape. ‘It was the grace of god,’ he said,
and, waiting courteously for me to nish my tea, wished me
luck and left.
 I did not know Gen. Rawat much then, but I had liked him a
lot. He came across as earthy, straightforward and a genuinely
nice person. No one had any inkling then that he would go on to
become India’s rst Chief of Defence Sta or that we would lose
him in a tragic helicopter accident just two years later. Not in
my wildest dreams had I thought that I would be writing his
biography. But that was destined to happen.
When I started writing Bipin: The Man Behind the Uniform, I
slowly got to know the COAS I had once had tea with a little
better. It was while interviewing Lt Col B.K. Singh (retd), who
had piloted the chopper that had crashed in Dimapur, that I
learnt that Gen. Rawat had climbed out of the badly mangled
Cheetah with a bloodstained shirt and had assured Singh, ‘Just
don’t worry! These things happen. You did your best.’ He had
then asked for another helicopter and done the trip a few hours
later, completely una ected by the crash.
As you read this book you will come across many heart-
warming episodes from the life of India’s highest-ranking
defence o cer, whom most of us saw only in uniform. And
though I am aware of the extreme emotions he stirred in people,
many of them in uniform, he was indeed a remarkable man. He
lived by his beliefs, took up stands for the army that many
others in his position might not have taken, since they would be
considered diplomatically incorrect; and he had the moral
courage to stand by what he had said, face criticism and take
responsibility when it was due.
Gen. Bipin Rawat was a simple man. When he was young, he
was quiet and reticent, never mentioning to anyone that his
father was a General. He would always carry his own luggage,
even when he went home. When he rose to the highest rank, he
liked watching musical talent shows on television. He
sometimes went to sleep sharing his bed with his dogs. He
didn’t care much about what he was wearing. His clothes were
mostly bought by his buddies or by his wife. He was often
ribbed by friends who told him that he had the hide of a rhino,
at which he would just laugh. He insisted his daughters would
use public transport, and not an o cial army vehicle, even
when he was COAS.
I would like to request his strongest critics to read this book.
They will then realize that he lived his life by the same rules
that he applied to others. He might have had his aws—and
who doesn’t?—but the fact is that he was honest,
straightforward, kind and a nationalist who believed in doing
what he felt was right for his country. Which is more than what
can be said for a lot of other people.
To those who loved him, I would like to say I hope this book
tells you at least some stories that you didn’t know and brings
him back to life again, if only for a while. If that happens, I will
be satis ed that my e orts have not gone to waste.
 Prologue
Radio Silence

8 December 2021
Sulur Air Force Station, Tamil Nadu
Around 11.35 a.m.
It is a clear winter day. The sun shines brightly. A pleasant
breeze rustles the leaves of the coconut trees. A xed wing
Indian Air Force Embraer aircraft has landed on the main
runway and is taxiing down to the VIP Reception Tarmac. It has
come from the Palam air base, Delhi, covering a distance of
1951 km in about two and a half hours. When it nally comes
to a standstill in Parking Bay Number 1, the pilot quickly
disembarks and stands by the stepladder to receive the VIP
guest he has own. Group Captain Varun Singh, Shaurya
Chakra, Directing Sta , Defence Services Sta College (DSSC),
who has come to Sulur to escort his special guests back to
Wellington, also stands beside him.
General Bipin Rawat, Param Vishisht Seva Medal, Uttam
Yudh Seva Medal, Ati Vishisht Seva Medal, Vishisht Seva Medal,
Sena Medal and Yudh Seva Medal, Chief of Defence Sta , has
emerged at the door of the aircraft. All those waiting come to
attention and salute as the highest-ranking o cer in the Indian
armed forces walks down the stepladder in his crisp uniform,
his eyes bright and alert. Mrs Madhulika Rawat walks behind
him. She is dressed ina deep blue salwar kameez and has a
warm smile on her face.
 The others in the four-star General’s entourage follow. These
include his Defence Assistant, Brigadier Lakhbinder Singh
Lidder, Sta O cer Lt Col Harjinder Singh, Administration NCO
Havil-dar Satpal Rai and Personal Security O cers Naik
Gursewak Singh, Naik Jitender Kumar, Lance Naik B. Sai Teja
and Lance Naik Vivek Kumar. All four are para commandos.
In Parking Bay 2, just a few yards away, stands a stocky Mi-17
V5 helicopter with its auxiliary engine humming. Wing
Commander P.S. Chauhan, Commanding O cer of the 109
Helicopter Unit (the Knights), located at Sulur Air Force Station,
waits beside it. He is an experienced pilot who has own the
route frequently on VIP as well as training sorties. His co-pilot,
Squadron Leader Kuldeep Singh, is already seated inside the
chopper along with the ight crew, which includes ight
gunner Junior Warrant O cer Rana Pratap Das and ight
engineer Junior Warrant O cer (JWO) Pradeep. They are all
relaxed and ready for the ight. At Sulur, pilots do the Coonoor
route so many times that they refer to it as the ‘milk run’, a
World War II term used to describe a regular trip during which
nothing unusual tends to happen.
Chauhan steps forward and introduces himself to the CDS,
who shakes his hand warmly. He then boards the chopper,
accompanied by Madhulika and his sta o cers. Chauhan
enters the cockpit. The ight gunner pulls up the ladder. Co-
pilot Kuldeep starts reading from the cockpit checklist.
Chauhan switches on the chopper’s two main engines. The
rotors swirl into action, and the deafening roar of the motor lls
up the helicopter. Madhulika looks at her husband, who nods
back reassuringly.
By the side of the chopper stands the marshal with two
batons in his hands, guiding the lift-o . The Mi-17 starts
taxiing to the runway. The pilot pulls the joystick forward,
making the chopper’s nose dip down. He then opens the
throttle. At about 11.48 a.m., pilot lifts the chopper into a
steady hover and then eases the cyclic stick forward to achieve
perfect take o altitude. The chopper starts gaining altitude
and departs smoothly on the desired climb path carrying ten
passengers and four crew members on board.

•••
The o cers present there, to see the CDS o , stand at attention
as the strong draft from the Mi-17’s powerful rotors makes their
clothes whip against their bodies. They watch as it makes a
beautiful copybook take-o towards Wellington, where it is
scheduled to land at the Wellington Gymkhana Club helipad.
The General is on a visit to the Defence Services Sta College
(DSSC) to address the faculty and student o cers of the Sta
Course.
The chopper crosses Coimbatore city and then soars high.
Brig. Lakhbinder is reading a WhatsApp message from his wife,
Geetika. ‘Enjoy Wellington! It has given us so much,’ she has
written. Lakhbinder smiles and types out a reply. Harjinder is
resting his head back on the seat. The face of his thirteen-year-
old daughter, Preet, ashes before his eyes. She has been the
biggest gift of his life. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.
Satpal Rai’s mind is in Darjeeling and on his wife with a smile
brighter than the green pothe ki mala she wears. She has spent
her life waiting for him. This time he will take her on that long-
overdue vacation, he promises himself. Bipin and Madhulika,
who have done the ight before, are looking out of the window,
enjoying the pristine view.
 The chopper ies for nearly forty minutes, crossing tea
gardens and thick forests. Bipin points out the Mettupalayam
railway station to Madhu. This is where the toy train to Ooty
starts. It covers a forty-six-kilometre track that runs through
the picturesque Nilgiri mountains. He knows that Wellington
should now be just about ten minutes away.
It is then that they both notice the clouds swirling in from
over the hills. The chopper is soon surrounded by a dense grey
mist that blocks their view completely. The two pilots speak to
each other. They are convinced that the helicopter should be
above Wellington, but visibility is zero. They don’t realize that
they have strayed about 10 km from their route and are ying
above steep hills. The passengers peer blindly into the thick
clouds through their windows. They are a little confused but
not unduly worried.
Suddenly there is a deadly crash. and raging ames engulf
the Mi-17. And then there is complete radio silence.
Interviews with family members and creative licence
have been used to recreate General Bipin Rawat’s last
chopper ight from Sulur. Landing time for the
Embraer has been approximated for the time the
chopper took o from Sulur Air Force Station, which
has been stated as 11.45 a.m.
8 December 2021
Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu
Around 12.14 p.m.
Coimbatore-based wedding photographer Joe Paul,
fty-two, his friend Nazar and some members from
Nazar’s family are on a day trip to a place called Run-
nymede, near Ooty, for a family photo shoot. Parking
their Ford EcoSport on the road, they enter the lush
green forested area and are walking along the railway
track when they are startled by the deep reverberating
hum of a chopper. It is ying directly overhead.
Fascinated by the helicopter’s close proximity, Joe takes
out his cell and starts makinga video. Suddenly a
swirling cloud of dense mist appears in the sky. Even as
the horri ed onlookers watch, the helicopter ies into
the fog and slowly disappears. Soon after, they hear the
sound of rotors scraping the branches of trees and then
a loud echoing crash.
‘Odangidu cha (Has it broken)?’ a shocked Nazar asks
Joe. ‘Aama’, Joe replies, stunned.
 1

‘Chal, Chhotu, Bhaag!’

8 December 2021
Jaipur

C
ol Vijay Rawat (retired) was having a late lunch at his
Banipark residence when his cellphone rang. It was his
wife Sanyogita’s cousin asking him to switch on the
television set immediately, which he did. Vijay was horri ed to
see the news channels reporting that the Mi-17 taking his
brother Gen. Bipin Rawat to Wellington had crashed.
He immediately called up his sister, Kiran, in the US. It was
night there, but the moment she switched on the TV to watch
the news from India, she said she would be coming to India.
Soon after, Vijay received a call from Major General Raju
Chauhan, Maj. Gen.-in-Charge, Administration (MG IC Admn.),
South-Western Command, who told him that an aircraft was
being sent to Jaipur to y him to Delhi. ‘I refused, saying I would
prefer to drive down, as it would take the same time,’ he says.
Soon, the Station Commander arrived at their residence along
with a sta car, which had been deputed to take them to Delhi.
‘He insisted I should not take my car.’
 The Rawats quickly packed a suitcase and left. As the black
Maruti Ciaz sped down the Jaipur—Delhi highway, Vijay stared
blindly out of the car window, his eyes clouded with tears.
Desperately hoping for the best, he got lost in the memories of
the brother he had looked up to all his life.

•••
January 1968
Dharamshala
6.30a.m.
Two fair and slim Pahadi boys, crisply clad in school
uniforms, badges and ties, hair neatly combed back with
identical side partings, stood panting breathlessly on the parade
ground, their cheeks pink from their early-morning 500-metre
sprint in the cold and their backs stooping under the weight of
their heavy schoolbags. They had got late having breakfast, and
had to run down from their house, which was on top of the hill,
to the parade ground down below, where their school bus would
be waiting for them. They could see it disappearing around the
bend.
Vijay, barely seven years old and studying in class two, looked
tearfully at his older brother, Bipin, who was eleven years old
and in class six. ‘Bus miss ho gayi, Bunny (We have missed the
bus, Bunny), he said, looking crestfallen. Bipin narrowed one
eye and was looking intently at the disappearing Shaktiman
truck. There was a determined look in his soft brown eyes.
Taking a deep breath, he reached for his brother’s hand and held
it tight. ‘Chal, Chhotu, bhaag. Isko mod pe pakdenge (Let’s run,
Chhotu. We will catch it at the bend).
 With bags and water bottles swinging from their shoulders,
the two boys raced down the nallah that dipped down steeply.
They tumbled over rocks and fallen pine leaves, and zipped
down the narrow mud path, which was used by the locals. Their
giggles echoed in the chilly breeze. Within minutes, they had
shimmied down the hillside and were at the road that had taken
a full turn around the hill. When the school bus, with
chattering schoolkids on board, reached the bend, the driver
found the two Rawat siblings on the roadside, waving their
arms in the air, and the bus screeched to a halt right in front of
them.
The olive-green-uniformed soldier, holding the door open for
them, a smile playing on his weatherbeaten face, could not have
imagined in his wildest dreams that the breathless kid climbing
up the steps, dragging his brother behind him, was one day
going to be India’s Chief of Defence Sta . The two Rawat
siblings quickly climbed up the steps mumbling ‘Thank you,
bhaiya’ and avoided looking at their sister, Kiran, who was
glaring at them ercely from her seat.

•••

Meeting Col Vijay Rawat

Delhi Cantonment
14 June 2022
Sitting upright in an easy chair at the 5/11 Gorkha Ri es
guest room in Shankar Vihar, Delhi, with ngers clasped under
his chin, Col Vijay Rawat has a faraway look on his face when he
shares this endearing memory of his older brother, who so
suddenly disappeared from his life. There is a marked physical
resemblance between the two siblings, and it would be easy for
anyone to guess that they belong to the same gene pool. He has
a similar smile, the same warm brown eyes, the same nose and
the same strong bone structure. Beyond that, the resemblance
ends. Vijay admits that though he looks a lot like his elder
brother, who was four years older than him, the two were
diametrically opposite in nature and temperament. While Bipin
was quiet, responsible and academically inclined, Vijay was a
real-world Dennis the Menace, constantly getting into trouble;
and one of Bipin’s growing-up responsibilities was to keep
bailing his brother out, which he did uncomplainingly.

The House on the Hill

‘Early 1968, when Dad took over command of 5/11 GRat
Dharamshala, we went along with him and were admitted to
Sacred Heart Convent in Yol Cantonment, Vijay says. ‘Bipin was
in class six, Kiran in class three and I was in class two. We hada
house on top of a hill, and every morning the three of us would
get ready for school and walk down to the ground that was
about half a kilometre from our house, where our school bus, a
big, lumbering Shaktiman, used to stop. It would take us from
Dharamshala to Yol Camp. Kiran would always go to the bus
stop on time, but Bipin and I would often get late having
breakfast and nd that the Shakti-man had already left. We
would then run down the nallah and meet the road one turn
ahead. Since the bus took a long, winding route, we would be
able to catch it there,’ he recounts.
It is, by far, one of the most charming memories of the little
boy who would grow up to be India’s rst Chief of Defence Sta .
Bipin Rawat’s story, however, needs to begin from when he was
born, and Vijay just relates the facts about that time, since he
did not happen to be around for the next four years.

Bunny
Bipin was born on 16 March 1958 in Dehradun.
His father, then Captain Laxman Singh Rawat, was posted as
an instructor at the Indian Military
Academy, Dehradun, when his wife, Sushila, went into
labour. The young captain rushed her to the Military Hospital,
where she delivered their eldest son—a plump, healthy, fair
baby boy, whom they named Bipin, a ectionately called Bunny
by everyone at home.
He grew up to be a model child—kind and hardworking,
respectful towards his elders, protective of his younger sister,
Kiran, and very fond of his youngest brother, Vijay, or the
notorious Chhotu, who came into the world four years later and
turned it topsy-turvy for not just the immediate family but for
anyone who came in contact with him.

Staying Up to Study with

Satpal Mamaji
In November 1969, move orders came for 5/11 Gorkha Ri es,
and Lt Col Rawat took his unit from Dharamshala to Ladakh.
His wife and children had to shift back to Dehradun, where they
took up a house in Idgah Colony. While Bipin and Vijay got
admission in St Joseph Academy, Kiran started going to the
Convent of Jesus and Mary. Since Sushila Rawat was staying
alone with the children, her younger brother, Satpal (later Col
Satpal Parmar), who was doing his graduation from DAV College
Dehradun at that time, was sent by the family to stay with
them. ‘Bunny had a tough time with Satpal Mamaji, Vijay
remembers with a smile. ‘When Mamaji’s exams were going on,
he would be studying till one in the night. He would make
Bunny sit next to him, just so that he could have some company.
Bunny, poor chap, was in seventh standard and didn’t have
much to study, but he was a good kid and would obediently
open his books and sit up with Mamaji but would keep dozing
o ’
Four years later, when Bipin was preparing for his ISC board
exam (class eleven) in Shimla, he gave the same treatment to
Vijay. ‘Bunny was in eleventh and I was in seventh standard. He
would make me stay up with as long as he kept studying. This
time, I was the one who kept dropping o to sleep,’ Vijay says
with a smile.

Parents in Bhutan, Days in

Boarding School
In 1970, Lt Col Rawat got posted to the Indian Military Training
Team (IMTRAT), Bhutan, a training mission of the Indian Army
responsible for training the Royal Bhutan Army (RBA) and the
Royal Bodyguard of Bhutan (RBG). Sushila Rawat joined him in
Thimphu, while the children had to be put in boarding. So
Bipin, Vijay and Kiran were taken out of their old schools and
shifted to Cambrian Hall, which had a good boarding facility for
students.
Bipin was in class eight, Kiran in class ve and Vijay in class
four. The boys were in the main school building, which was the
old palace of Jodha Shamsher Singh, while the girls used to stay
in the girls’ hostel, 5 km away, and would commute by the
school bus. Vijay was in the lower dormitory on the ground
oor, while Bipin, being a senior, was in the higher dormitory
on the rst oor. With their parents away, Bipin became even
more responsible towards his younger siblings.
‘Bunny and I would both be dressed in the school uniform—
grey trousers, white shirt and navyblue striped tie—and being
on di erent oors in the same building, we would run into each
other almost every day. On Sunday we would get our pocket
money. Since I was in the junior wing, I would be given one
rupee a week, while Bunny would get two rupees a week,’ Vijay
says, confessing that his own pocket money would get over very
soon, since he would quickly spend it on snacks and then go
looking for Bipin to settle his pending dues.
‘We had a nice canteen, run by an elderly balding gentleman
we addressed as Mr Bob. There, we could get bun samosa for
twenty paise, four nan khatais for ten paise, and even Coke, that
had just arrived in India and was available for thirty paise a
bottle. Needless to say, I would be having a feast all the time and
would nish my pocket money. But Bunny was not a spender
and always had money. I would take loans from Mr Bob after my
own money got over, telling him that my brother would pay it
back. Bunny would do so uncomplainingly. Sometimes, my
sister would do it too. So, thanks to them, Ihada great time at
the boarding,’ Vijay says with a happy twinkle in his eyes.
He recounts one of Bipin’s birthdays, when he was sweet
enough to come looking for his younger brother and o er to
take him along to the canteen for a treat. ‘I told him, in a very
matter-of-fact tone, that I had already taken a treat from Mr
Bob, and he could just go and pay for it.’ Bipin nodded and did
the needful. ‘He never cribbed,’ remembers Vijay. ‘He had
decided that I was his responsibility, and being my elder
brother, he had to put up with all my antics, which he did with
in nite patience,’
Both brothers moved in their separate friend circles but
bonded over their stamp and coin collections, which they
would work very hard at growing. They would coax their father
to send them Bhutanese stamps, and even those from other
countries, that he received in his o cial mail. Often, he would
send them rst-day covers, and when they received two
identical ones, the brothers would swap the duplicate one with
some other kid for a new stamp. The brothers also had a coin
collection that they were passionate about. ‘In fact, Bunny got a
table made from that, which he kept in his house,’ says Vijay.

The Winter of 1971

When the war started, Lt Col Rawat was in Bhutan with his
wife, while the children were in Cambrian Hall. In December
1971, since their school had its winter break, Bipin, Kiran and
Vijay came to spend their holidays in their maternal home—14
New Road. Many of their other cousins, including Shiv-ender,
who was studying at Welham Boys’ School, were also there, to
spend their own winter breaks, and the children were having a
wonderful time, completely unmindful of the tense situation at
home with a war on at the border and Shivender’s father, Lt Col
Onkar Singh, in the midst of it.

The House of Memories

Spread over an area of nearly 2.5 acres, planted with fruit trees
like lychee, mango, peach and guava, 14 New Road, with nearly
twenty-four rooms, was part of a cluster of three houses—Badi
Kothi, Palli
Kothi and the third which had had been sold and was now
called Aroma Hotel. While the family would stay at Badi Kothi,
the servants would be at Palli Kothi, which was 58 Lytton Road
(later renamed 58 Subhash Road).
‘Bunny was thirteen, I was nine. Most of the time, all of us
cousins would be up on the trees, mostly the neighbours’ trees,
stealing their fruit,’ remembers Vijay. ‘They would chase us o
their property shouting, “Why don’t you eat the fruit of your
own trees?” And we would run o shouting, “Because yours are
sweeter. m
The cousins would form teams and play football or hockey
using curved betel nut branches snipped o from the betel nut
trees in the compound. They would invite the colony kids home
and create a ruckus running around the elds, screaming and
giggling. The only person who could keep the children in
control was Bipin and Vijay’s father, who hada cane, which both
the brothers and all their cousins feared, since nearly all of
them had received spankings with it. But in December 1971, he
was far away in Bhutan—so the kids ran berserk, having the
time of their lives.

Roti-Eating Competitions
At 14 New Road, breakfast would be served in the dining room,
Vijay recalls. It would mostly be bread and eggs, or parathas.
However, the kids had their eyes on a basketful of arsa (a fried
pahadi sweet made with our and jaggery) that their nani kept
in the puja room. ‘We would quietly sneak past the tulsi plant
outside when no grown-up was around, push our hands into
the tokri that Nani used to keep over there and run o chewing
on the arsa. Bunny would participate wholeheartedly,
remembers Vijay.
In the evening, the children would gather in the kitchen,
which was on one side of the courtyard. They would sit on
wooden chaukis, with their thalis balanced on their laps, while
Bhagtu the cook, who had come from Dhanari in Uttarakhand,
handed out fresh, hot rotis, straight o the griddle.
‘Everything was a game for us in those days,’ recollects Vijay,
a smile playing on his lips. ‘Often, we would have roti eating
competitions, trying to beat each other at how many we could
eat. When our stomachs were full, we would announce a break
and go running around the courtyard a few times to build up
some more appetite. We would then return and start devouring
more rotis.’ He laughs.
When they found the menu boring, Bipin and Vijay would
ask Bhagtu to heap steaming hot rice on their plates, which
they would mix with sugar and ghee and eat with their bare
hands, licking the ghee dripping o their ngers. ‘Those were
such beautiful days,’ says Vijay.
The winter was chilly. Dehradun was shivering in the
freezing winds blowing in from the Himalayan range, making
the water in the taps turn to sleet. The women would wrap their
shawls tighter around themselves, the men would put on their
woollen topis and thick khadi jackets over their sweaters, while
the kids would wait for the sun to come out, so that they could
climb over the garden wall and escape their homes with runny
noses, which they would cunningly wipe on pullover sleeves
frayed from their games of football and hockey.
 They would just keep an eye out for Thakur Kishan Singh,
younger brother of Bipin’s Nanaji, respected politician and
lawyer who had once been part of Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet.
He had retired but took care of the family home in Dehradun
while Thakur Surat Singh, his older brother (Bipin’s Nanaji)
lived in Uttarkashi and took care of the family property there.
Thakur Kishan Singh would mostly be in his study, interacting
with visitors who came to him for advice and help, and the boys
would avoid that area completely. His wife would spend her
entire day planning meals for the extended family and shouting
at the kids. Leading the brat pack was the thirteen-year-old
Bunny, thin, sporty and ever-smiling in his large canvas pants
and shirt, with a comfortable old sweater worn over it casually.
He would be the rst in for breakfast, calling out to the two
Chhotus—his younger brother, Vijay, and cousin Shivender.
‘Hurry up, you two. Nani is getting annoyed,’ he would say, and
the two of them, who had already started heroworshipping
Bunny, would quickly run down to the dining room. The boys
would dig into their bread omelettes or manduve ki rotis and
ghee, taking large sips from their glasses of milk. ‘Fourteen New
Road was a house of memories for all of us,’ Vijay sighs.

St Edward’s, Shimla
In February 1972, Lt Col Rawat moved to Shimla as General
Sta , Operations, GSO 1, Western Command. He decided to take
his family along, not knowing at that point that his own stay
there would only be two months long. In March, his wife and
children joined him in Shimla, and in April, he was promoted to
the rank of full Colonel and moved to Kathua, a small border
town in Jammu Kashmir, as Col GS, 36 Infantry Division (now
36 Rapid). His was from the seventh batch of the Indian
Military Academy which was the rst batch to be given a full
colonel rank. Up till then, o cers used to doa long tenure as
Lieutenant Colonel and then get directly promoted to the
Brigadier rank.
Sushila and the children stayed on in Shimla from March
1972 to December 1973. Since Shimla lacked accommodation
facilities for the army, two oors of Himland Hotel on Cart Road
had been converted into lodgings and o cers were given two-
room suites there, where they would open their boxes and
establish a home.
‘When we moved to Shimla, as many as sixteen families were
staying in Himland, remembers Vijay. The Rawats were given
rooms 33 and 34 on the rst oor, and those became home for
them for the next two years. One of the rooms had a portion
that had been converted into a kitchen. The other room had
study tables placed alongside the beds, so that the children
could sit on their beds and place their books on the table to do
their homework.

Movies at the Ritz

The main attraction for the children in Shimla was the Ritz, a
cinema on the ridge that would screen English movies. They
would sneak out of the house right from under their mother’s
nose and make a beeline for the hall, hands jangling the
painstakingly collected coins nestled in their pockets. ‘My
brother’s pocket money had increased to six rupees by then,
while I used to get four rupees per month, so naturally, I made
him buy my movie tickets as well. All my own pocket money
was usually spent on snacks in the school canteen or sparkling
new kanche [marbles], that I would play against the other boys,
trying to win theirs, says Vijay, laughing at the memory.
Since the boys were staying alone with their mother, they
would also help her in grocery shopping. Most evenings, the
brothers would walk down to the Sabzi Mandi opposite the Ritz
and come back home with their cloth jholas laden with
vegetables and fruits for the family. In those days, no vehicles
were allowed on the Mall Road in the evenings, so the walk
would be leisurely and fun, even if their shoulders stooped a
little under the weight of their heavy bags. ‘Life was good,’ says
Vijay nostalgically.

A Lifetime Bond with Sai

Baba
Vijay likes to recount a life-changing incident that happened in
Bipin’s life and shaped his belief forever. ‘Someone in Shimla
hosted a programme on Shirdi Sai Baba,’ he says. ‘We had all
heard about the miracles that Sai Baba used to perform. Bunny
was so curious that he decided to attend the function with a
classmate.’
The two boys went to the event after school got over. Bipin
was so fascinated that he stayed back till the end. ‘When he
came home that evening, Bunny was completely in awe of Sai
Baba. He told me he had seen stu like vibhooti falling out of a
picture. He returned totally converted,’ remembers Vijay. ‘He
had become a Sai Baba devotee.’
It was to be a devotion for life. ‘Prayer became a part of his
daily routine thereafter, which he followed even in his busy
days as COAS and CDS. He would get up early, do his pranayama
and yoga, and not leave the house without praying,’ Vijay says.
 Vijay also remembers that Bipin had bought a silver ring
from the Shirdi Sai Baba event, which he started wearing
regularly from the age of fourteen; he wore the ring for the next
forty-nine years, all the way till he was sixty-three. ‘It was on
his nger even on the day of the tragic helicopter accident,’
Vijay says softly.

Bunny Makes a Friend for

Life
The boys were admitted to St Edward’s, one of the oldest and
most famous boys’ schools in Shimla, located on Cart Road. At
the red-brick-walled St Edward’s, Bipin completed his class ten
and eleven, and met Rohit Sarin, who would soon become his
best friend. Their friendship was destined to last a lifetime.
Rohit was the class topper.
‘Rohit would always stand rst in class,” remembers Vijay.
‘Bipin would rank somewhere between fth and tenth. The two
of them were absolutely inseparable. They would sit together in
class, study together after school, whether in our house, which
was right next to St Edward’s, or Rohit’s, and even roam around
Shimla together.
Vijay remembers one evening in particular. Rohit was
walking back home when he caught sight of two young boys
smoking on the top of the hill, one of whom he felt was Vijay. He
promptly came back and told Bipin that his younger brother
had been smoking. A shocked Bipin immediately went home
and told his mother. When
Vijay returned home that evening, happily humming a tune,
he got the thrashing of his life from Sushila. ‘I later caught up
with Rohit Sarin and demanded to know how he recognized me
up on the hill from so far away, and he replied that he had
recognized my sweater and was duty-bound to inform Bunny.’
Vijay says with a grin.
Back then, Rohit and Bipin were little boys with stars in their
eyes, looking at the wonders of life in awe and making the most
of it. Neither of them knew what life held in store for them. And
both friends went on to do extremely well in life. Rohit became
a doctor and, eventually, director of the National Institute of
Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases; Bipin, of course, reached
so high that a new rank was created in the Indian armed forces
for him.
 2

‘Hello! My Name Is Bipin.

Can I Sit Next to You?’

8 December 2021
National Institute of TB and Respiratory Diseases
Mehrauli, New Delhi
Around 1.30 p.m.

D
r Rohit Sarin was going through some important les in
his o ce when, from the corner of his eye, he saw the
screen of his cellphone ashing repeatedly with new
WhatsApp message noti cations. Curious to know what was
causing the urry of activity, he put his pen down and reached
for his cell.
The noti cations were from his St Edward’s school group.
The words ‘Bipin’, ‘chopper crash’ and ‘Wellington’ caught his
eye, and he could feel beads of sweat appearing on his forehead.
He googled for the news. Tears clouded his eyes as he prayed
that his friend was alive. Images of Bipin, from his teenage
years, started playing in his mind like a reel in slow motion.
Class 10
St Edward’s School, Shimla
April 1972
The class topper, Rohit, was sitting at his desk, deeply
engrossed in reading the underlined passages in his chemistry
book, waiting for the class to begin. Their science teacher,
Brother Okeefe, had warned them that he would be asking
questions in class, and Rohit did not want to be at the receiving
end of the Bunsen burner pipe that Brother Okeefe always
carried coiled around his hand. At the rst sign of disobedience
or carelessness from a student, the pipe would curl out expertly
from his hand with a smooth ick of his palm, and before you
knew it, it had hit you on the back or the shoulder or the neck,
with a hiss, leaving behind an ugly red welt.
‘Looks like we have a new admission,’ someone whispered,
and Rohit looked up from his book to nd a new face peering
into the classroom—the kid was short and very fair, dressed in a
brand-new school uniform. He was standing at the door,
looking hesitantly into the class, his cheeks ushed pink. He
appeared so nervous that Rohit absent-mindedly gave him a
reassuring smile.
The new boy started walking towards his desk, and once he
was there, he stood shifting his weight from one foot to
another. Then, with a shy smile that reached right up to his
warm brown eyes, he said, ‘Hello! My name is Bipin Rawat. Can I
sit next to you?’ Rohit nodded and, shifting his books to one
side, made place for the newcomer.

•••
Meeting Prof. Rohit Sarin
31 August 2022
National Institute of TB and Respiratory Diseases
Mehrauli, New Delhi
1 p.m.
Professor Rohit Sarin, principal consultant and former director,
NITRD, leans back in his chair in his white coat, a mask pulled
over his face. His eyes look sad as he lets his mind travel back in
time nearly fty years to Shimla where, in the early ’70s, he and
Bipin Rawat used to study in the same class at the prestigious St
Edward’s School, run by the Irish Brothers. He gets lost in
memories of the gentle and soft-spoken new boy in class who
soon became his best friend.
He talks nostalgically about the stern Brother Okeefe, of
whom all the boys were mortally afraid; the beautiful Gurmala
Mehta Ma’am, their English teacher, who was just twenty and
the secret crush of every boy in class. He recalls long walks that
the two friends would take on Cart Road, talking about life and
what it might hold in store for them, and —with a sigh—
remembers those long-lost days of Archie comics and James
Hadley Chase novels, of long walks on the ridge, of breathing in
the crisp mountain air, of homework done together, heads bent
over books and evenings spent in each other’s houses, just
chatting and laughing and biting into crisp hot aloo pakoras,
washed down with milky chai.
‘Bipin used to live in Himland Hotel, and I liveda few
minutes’ walk away, near the top of Cart Road, in an old, British-
time cottage called Edelweiss, named after the national ower
of Austria? Dr Sarin remembers. He says they both lived so close
to school that from his house they could hear the school bell;
Bipin’s house was even closer, and they could see their school
from there. ‘We would often walk down together in the
morning in our uniform: grey trousers and white shirt.
Sometimes, Bipin would rush out of his house, hurriedly
knotting up his tie and pushing his arms into his blazer. We
would also walk back together after classes got over, lost in
conversation about teachers and classmates and the events of
the day.’
The boys would be back by 3 p.m., having nished half of
their homework in class itself on most days. The rest they
would do at home, sitting together in either of their houses,
after having had lunch and changed into their home clothes.
‘After our work was complete, we would go on long walks along
Cart Road to Chhota Shimla. Those days, it was calm and
peaceful with a lot of greenery and hardly any tra c. Those
were such beautiful days, Sarin says, coming back to the present
with a shake of his head.

Meeting Bipin after Many

Years
The two friends separated when Bipin cleared his National
Defence Academy entrance exam and joined the NDA, while
Rohit got into medical college. They had both gone their
separate ways after clearing their class eleven Indian School
Certi cate exam. Many years later, they would meet again in
Delhi, both having done brilliantly in life and established
themselves in their respective careers. They easily picked up
from where they had left—their friendship had withstood the
test of time.
 Prof. Sarin, however, admits that the Bipin he met in Delhi,
who had risen like a meteor in the army, was an entirely
di erent person from the shy kid he knew at St Edward’s. While
in the early stages of life, Bipin had been reticent and shy; and
more of a listener, his views became very well de ned later. ‘He
grew up to be a very di erent person and also a nationalist to
the core,’ says Sarin. The Bipin he met later in life was a leader;
very con dent and self-assured, ready to take the harshest
decisions, knowing full well that some would go o well while
others wouldn’t. He could take responsibility and would not
care if there were people supporting him or not. ‘The one thing
that had not changed was
‘Hello! My Name Is Bipin. Can I Sit Next to You?’ his
commitment to whatever he had decided to do, shares Sarin,
recollecting how, even in their schooldays, if the two of them
had decided to complete a chapter or a certain section of it,
Bipin would insist that they do it without delay.
‘In our schooldays, it was very easy for anyone to be friends
with him, because he was quite accommodating and adjustable.
He didn’t have strong views or ideas, and he was very amenable
to suggestion. Later, he became a man who had very clear, well-
thought-out views.’

The Shy Schoolboy Was

Now a Bold, Confident
Leader
The new Bipin was a man who ‘could handle a situation rather
than get bogged down by it’, says Sarin. The little boy who had
hesitated to enter a classroom had learnt to rmly control
rebels in Congo, plan surgical strikes across the border, take a
 rm stand in support of his soldiers and walk with his head
held high even in the face of criticism. ‘Bipin had become a
military leader. He was not a bureaucrat who would keep
everyone happy,’ says Sarin. So how did the quiet, hesitant kid
from school metamorphose into this tough, no-nonsense
General? Prof. Sarin says it was probably the military training
and exposure that Bipin got.
Sarin feels that Bipin had worked on himself; he had taught
himself how to overcome his weaknesses—like when he could
not jump in the NDA, he came back stronger and did it. Sarin
feels that Bipin had accepted the fact that he did not know a lot,
and had taught himself to make an e ort and learn whatever he
did not know. ‘He continued to read books, take lectures, to
learn and adapt. I feel that was what made him what he was,’
Sarin analyses.
During their time in Delhi, Bipin and Rohit would make time
for each other. They would make it a point to meet at
anniversaries and family functions. Though both were
extremely busy with their own work commitments, they would
still take out time to share con dences, just as they had done in
childhood. Sarin would read reports in newspapers about the
controversial decisions Bipin had taken and would sometimes
ask him, ‘Yaar, tu aisa kyun karta hai (Why do you do it)?’ to
which the General would just smile and explain his standpoint.
‘Being a doctor, I was more emotional, while his decisions
would be governed by logic,’ Sarin says.
When the two sat with a pre-dinner drink, Rohit would
advise his childhood friend to take time out from his various
commitments and responsibilities, to take care of his health,
and to spend more time with his family. Madhu, sitting nearby,
would just smile and say, ‘Ye kabhi nahi sunte (He never
listens).
Prof. Sarin remembers his trip to Kashmir, when Bipin was
Army Commander. ‘We had been chatting in the night. Later, I
saw that he was reading before going to bed. I asked him, ‘Kya
padh rahe ho yaar (What are you reading)?’ He replied, ‘Rohit,
everything is useful. Kuchh bhi padh leta hun, usko kahin na
kahin toh apply kar hi lete hain. Padhne se pehle mujhe neend
nahi aati. Purani aadat hai (Iread whatever I get my hands on.
All knowledge can be applied somewhere. I can’t sleep without
reading. It’s an old habit).
When Sarin woke up the next morning, Bipin was gone. He
asked Madhu about his whereabouts, and she replied that even
she had no idea. Bipin had just called for his helicopter and
taken o . ‘Something must have come up in the night, she said.
‘He is like that. He does not tell me about work.’
Sarin shares his nal memories of his friend, talking about
that unfortunate day when he learnt, from the WhatsApp
group of their common friends, that Bipin’s helicopter had
crashed. ‘He had been very happy in his profession. He was
satis ed that whatever he was doing, he was doing for the
country. He would have done so much more but he was taken
away so cruelly,’ he says, his voice in ected with grief.
‘What happened was so unfortunate. He was a wonderful
friend. He had been a dutiful son, looking after both his parents
so lovingly in their last days. And so was Madhu. She was such a
wonderful person. That was God’s will, so I cannot say
anything, but I don’t want to remember that day,’ he says,
wiping the tears clouding up his eyes.
 3

The Pretty New Class Teacher

8 December 2021
Gurgaon

G
unmala Singh was at her mother Mrs Balwant Mehta’s
house, engrossed in conversation with her, when her
brother walked into the room and informed the ladies
that Gen. Bipin Rawat’s helicopter had crashed. The two of them
were aghast. It had been nearly forty years since Gunmala had
rst seen Bipin in Shimla. He had then been a student of class
ten at St Edward’s School.

•••
Summer of 1972
St Edward’s School
Shimla
There was a lot of excitement in class that day.
 Bipin and Rohit were among the boys who had been told that
they would be getting a new class teacher, who would teach
them the English language as well as English literature. The
boys had known the slim, small and delicately built Gunmala
Mehta— daughter of Mrs Balwant Mehta—since she taught
them maths in class six. When she walked in there was stunned
silence in the class. It was followed by surreptitious smiles of
delight as the boys nudged each other and tried to look
nonchalant.
Gunmala was really pretty, unmarried and had just
completed her graduation from Miranda House, Delhi. She was
also twenty, so only a few years older to them. The fteen and
sixteen-years-olds couldn’t believe their luck. The rest of their
faculty comprised mostly the Irish brothers, and much older
and experienced teachers with grey hair, spectacles and grim
expressions on their faces. So a young and attractive class
teacher came like a breath of fresh air.
Though Gunmala taught them for less than two years, the
boys formed with her an association for life. Decades later,
when they were in their forties, they kept in touch with her. She
would often invite them and their families to her farmhouse for
lunch and an afternoon of rekindling old memories. Initially,
though, when she rst started teaching them, it was not easy to
discipline them, since some of them specialized in disrupting
the class.
One afternoon, when she was not around, the boys created a
ruckus and caught the attention of their principal, whose o ce
was right next to their class. He hauled them up and caned
them one by one. When Gunmala got to the classroom she
found them lined up outside, rubbing their sore hands, still
swollen pink from the punishment.
 ‘They tell me, even now sometimes, that I got them caned,’
she says with a smile, leaning forward on the sofa in her
elegantly done-up apartment in Gurgaon. ‘I tell them they must
have deserved it’
She says she remembers Bipin Rawat in class ten as an
industrious, hard-working and decent student. ‘He was no
problem at all and easily among the toppers.’ Soon after the
boys had written their Senior Cambridge exam in December
1973, Gun-mala met her future husband, Darshan Singh, and
got married, leaving the school for good. Darshan was the son of
Major General K. Bharat Singh of Bharatpur. Though he loved
the army, he had studied engineering and started a business
instead, and went on to become an educationist and the
chairman of Welham Boys’ School. Since he had a close
association with the army, he would often be invited to army
parties and get-togethers, which was where Gunmala ran into
her most famous former pupil many years later.

•••

‘Were You Ever in Shimla,

Ma’am?’
2016
Artillery Mess
New Delhi
Gunmala Singh had been invited to dinner and was engrossed
in conversation with a charming lady, who had a warm smile
and was seated next to her. She had told her that her name was
Madhulika. Gunmala could not help but notice Madhulika’s
husband—a fair, broad-shouldered and grey-haired gentleman
standing nearby, looking intently in their direction. He
appeared to be glaring, and Gunmala wondered if perhaps she
had spoken too long with his wife; maybe they had to go
somewhere, and the conversation was keeping her from that.
By the end of the evening, the gentleman walked across to
her and introduced himself as Lt Gen. Bipin Rawat, Vice Chief of
the Army Sta . ‘Were you ever in Shimla, ma’am?’ he asked her.
When she replied that she had taught at St Edward’s for nearly
two years, he smiled and gave her a crisp salute. ‘You were my
teacher then,’ he said, his eyes shining in pleasure. It turned out
that earlier that evening, he had only been looking at her to
gure out if she really was who he thought she was.
The discovery led to a lot of excitement, with those around
joining in the conversation too. ‘Oh! You look much older than
your teacher, someone remarked, at which Gunmala laughed
and confessed to Gen. Rawat that though they were both grey-
haired, she had camou aged her age with her coloured hair.
Gunmala’s husband, too, walked across wanting to know what
all the laughter and conversation were about, and was delighted
to nd that the Vice Chief was an ex-student of his wife. The
two couples met many times after that, and Gen. Rawat would
always come and talk to her and be extremely respectful.
Gunmala remembers one particular evening vividly. ‘It was
at a dinner, hosted at one of the messes, where we ran into
General and Mrs Rawat again,’ she says. ‘He was Chief then.
When they walked in he saw me there, and both of them
immediately came over to chat with me.’ It happened to be 16
March, which was his birthday. Later in the evening a cake was
brought, which the hosts asked Mrs Rawat to cut on behalf of
the birthday boy. Bipin stepped up and, much to Gunmala’s
embarrassment, declared with a smile, ‘No, today my teacher is
here, and she is going to cut my birthday cake.’
With that he walked across to her and bent over as a sign of
respect. ‘I didn’t know how to handle it. I wasn’t that much
older to him, but I was quite moved by his gesture,’ she
remembers. So Gunmala and Bipin cut the cake while people
around sang for him. And then she handed over a piece to her
former student, who happened to be the Chief of Army Sta ,
and who, at that moment, was standing by her side and smiling
widely from ear to ear.
Her eyes are sad as she leans back recollecting the terrible day
when she heard about the helicopter crash that took him away.
‘He was such a warm and lovely person, and so was his wife. It
was a horrible way for them to go,’ she says.
Crash site
8 December 2021
Coonoor
The natives of Nanjappa Chatram village, about four kilometres
from Coonoor, are used to seeing helicopters, since they live on the
route from the Sulur air base to Wellington. They don’t pay much
attention to the Mi-17 ying overhead that afternoon, till they
hear a loud blast. Those standing outside their houses see the
chopper fall to the ground and get engulfed in a blazing inferno.
Many of them drop what they are doing and rush down the hilly
terrain, scampering through tea gardens to the spot where the
wreckage lies burning. Angry ashes of re are leaping into the sky,
cutting through the dense mist. The blaze is so intense that no one
can get close to it. Some rush back to their homes to fetch buckets of
water to douse the raging re.
 4

A Chopper Crash He Survived

8 December 2021
Day of the crash
Dehradun
Late afternoon

I
t was a balmy winter afternoon. Retired Brigadier Shivender
Singh, rst cousin and childhood playmate of General Bipin
Rawat, or Bunny, as he was called in the family, had just
nished lunch in his airy Gajendra Vihar at when he heard his
cellphone ringing. It was a call from an o cer in Wellington,
who had once served with him. The Mi-17 bringing General
Bipin Rawat to Wellington from the Sulur Air Force Station had
crashed, he said.
Shivender was shocked. He could not believe destiny would
do it twice. His mind took him back seven years in time.

•••
The Dimapur Crash
2 February 2015
Rangapahar Military Station
Dimapur, Nagaland
Lt Col B.K. Singh, Commanding O cer of the Dimapur-based 12
(I) R&O Flight (Independent, Reconnaissance and Observation),
is standing at the helipad where a stocky single-engine Cheetah
helicopter awaits its VIP passenger. He spots a convoy of army
vehicles heading towards him and looks down at his watch.
7.50 a.m. ‘Perfectly on time, as always,’ he says to himself,
stepping forward to where the black Ambassador car with a
uttering ag has braked to a halt. The driver leaps out to open
the door to the back seat.
Lt Gen Bipin Rawat, GOC, 3 Corps, steps out in his combat
uniform. He holds a baton in hand, and his eyes are keen and
bright. The top of his polished DMS boots glint in the sunlight.
Though the sun is shining brightly, the general isn’t wearing
dark glasses. He seldom does, preferring to look into people’s
eyes, unhindered. His sta o cer Col Anand Manwal is right
behind him. The two of them are to be own to Itanagar, where
the General has a meeting with the Governor of Arunachal
Pradesh. Singh shall be ying the chopper along with his co-
pilot, Capt. Ksitij Gupta, a young o cer on his rst posting, who
is already waiting in the cockpit.
Bipin steps forward briskly to shake hands with BK, who has
served with him in Congo during a UN Peacekeeping Mission.
Manwal has caught up too. ‘Sir, it was BK’s birthday yesterday.
Kal iski party thi (He threw a party yesterday),’ he tells Bipin
with a mischievous smile. ‘Bulaya nahi humko (He didn’t invite
me),’ the General jokes, placing his hand on the shoulder of a
sheepish-looking B.K. Singh. ‘Happy birthday, BK! God bless
you.’ BK has turned thirty-nine, and Manwal happens to be his
National Defence Academy course mate.
Bipin walks across to the waiting chopper. At exactly 8 a.m.,
he takes his seat. Manwal sits on his left. BK briefs his guest,
saying that the weather is clear and all routine checks have been
done. The ight, he says, will take fty- ve minutes. ‘Do I have
your permission to y, sir?’ he asks. The General raises a thumb
in the air. The two pilots strap themselves to their seats, put on
their helmets and radio sets, and start the engine. Its deep,
reverberating growl lls up the small helicopter. The rotors
start whirring. With a roar, the Cheetah lifts into the air.

•••
Looking out of his window, Bipin has a clear view of the o cers
and soldiers who have come to see him o . They are holding on
to their caps as the wind tries to blow them away. The draft
from the powerful rotors is making their shirts billow and their
trousers ap against their legs. As the helicopter rises, his eyes
take in the lush greenery around the helipad and the steep drop
where the helipad ends. He is a man from the hills. The beauty
of the countryside never ceases to enthrall him.
His mind is already going over the points he plans to discuss
with the Governor… But he is suddenly shaken out of his
reverie. Something is not right. And then it strikes him. In the
chopper, there is an eerie silence. The engine’s noise appears to
have stopped completely. Manwal also notices the sudden quiet.
The two of them look at each other, puzzled. The pilots are
bending over their instruments, and Gen. Rawat does not want
to disturb them.
Must be an engine snag that they will soon correct, he tells
himself, looking out of the window. The helicopter is losing
height and appears to be going down steadily.
The ground is rushing up very fast, and within seconds, it is
in their faces. The chopper crashes into the runway with
tremendous force. It strikes the concrete, throwing up a cloud
of dust and scrap. Bipin covers his head with his arms in a re ex
action and pushes his head into his lap. The chopper bounces
up in the air from the impact and hits the ground yet again,
careening forward with the earsplitting screech of scraping
metal.
Bipin can feel the seat belt tightening against him as the right
side of the Cheetah suddenly dips down and the chopper turns
on his side. The other side is collapsing on top of him. He can
hear Man-wal scream as his forehead knocks against the side of
the machine. The right side has caved in completely, and Rawat
closes his eyes as broken bits of metal fall on him. Around him,
the stocky Cheetah shatters completely, burying its passengers
in steel and debris.

‘God Saved Us, Yaar’

8.15 a.m.
Flag Sta House, Rangapahar
Dimapur
Brig. Shivender Singh is having a relaxed cup of tea in the guest
bedroom when the phone rings. He is in Dimapur on a casual
visit. Shivender slips his feet into his slippers and walks across
to where the army line is set up on a side table in the corridor.
Bipin’s young aide- de-camp (ADC) is on the line.
Jai Hind, sir. Major Karamvir Singh this side, he says. ‘I have
some bad news, sir. Commander’s helicopter has had an
accident.’ His voice is grim.
A shocked Shivender listens as Karamvir tells him that he
does not have any other details at the moment and is rushing to
the helipad. Shivender asks him to send a vehicle. He says he
would like to come along too. Placing the receiver back in its
cradle, he returns to his room to dress. He debates whether to
tell Bipin’s father, Lt General Laxman
Singh Rawat, former Vice Chief of the Indian Army, who is
still in his bedroom, but decides against it. The frail old man has
dementia. He has lost track of time and people to the extent that
it is seldom that he has ashes of memory and recognizes his
own son. Most of the time he just looks at him blankly, as if
trying to gure out who he is. Shivender decides not to say
anything to him.
He is stepping out on to the verandah when he hears the rush
of vehicles. The General’s convoy is entering the gate. The
shining black sta car screeches to a stop in the porch, and the
driver leaps out to open the door. Bipin steps out, his face grim.
His uniform is shredded in places and smeared with
bloodstains.
Nodding to Shivender, who is watching with concern, he
says, ‘Main theek hun (I am ne). Without uttering another
word, he goes straight to his father’s room. The old man is
sitting up in bed, staring blankly ahead. Bipin bends down and
touches his feet. His father looks at him, confused. Bipin goes
out and, taking o his boots, stands in the mandir with his
hands folded and his eyes tightly shut. He then steps out and
goes to his own room.
Aconcerned Shivender follows him there, knocking on the
door to ask if he can come in. ‘Aaja, aaja (Come), Bipin calls out.
Shivender enters to nd that Bipin has taken o his shirt and is
inspecting himself in the mirror. His vest is ripped and muddy.
It is also stained with blood in places. ‘Aapki shirt pe khoon laga
hua hai (Your shirt is stained with blood), Shivender points out.
Bipin grimaces. ‘Bach gaye bahut badi baat hai (It’s enough
that I survived), he says. ‘God saved us, yaar. All four of us are
safe.’ By then, a nursing assistant has also arrived. He attends to
the gashes on the General’s chest and arms, applying medicine
and Band-Aids where required, and gives hima tetanus shot.
As soon as the nursing assistant leaves, Bipin tells Shivender,
‘Main taiyar hota hun (I will get ready). I have asked for another
helicopter.’
Shivender is taken aback. ‘You have just survived a helicopter
crash, Bunny,’ he tells his cousin. ‘Go tomorrow. Give yourself
some time to relax.’
‘No, I am ne, Rawat replies shortly. Jana zaruri hai (It’s
important to go). I have work there. People will be waiting for
me. Unhone taiyari kar ke rakhi hogi (They must have made all
the arrangements).
Shivender reasons with him that the arrangements can easily
be made again the next day. But Bipin cuts him short with, ‘Sab
theek hai (Everything is all right). I have made a commitment, I
shall keep it,
Shivender knows he will not change his mind. He seldom
does.
 Within two hours another helicopter has been arranged.
Around 10.30 a.m., Bipin walks out of the house in a fresh set of
combat greens. He is looking completely relaxed and
unperturbed. After a departing salute from the car, he is o .
Soon after, Shivender asks the adjutant for a vehicle and tells
the driver to take him to the helipad. He is horri ed to see the
state of the crashed Cheetah. It has been reduced to a mass of
shrunken junk. Other o cers have also come to see what
happened. Everyone marvels at the miraculous escape the
General has had.
Many years later, sitting in his Dehradun at, Brig. Shivender
recollects that fateful February morning. ‘It was a miracle that
he had survived the crash. Looking at the crushed chopper, no
one could have believed that its passengers were safe. But Bipin
had always been a survivor.’

‘I Was the Pilot of That

Chopper’
April 2021
Calcutta
Lt Col B.K. Singh, who piloted the ill-fated Cheetah on 2
December 2015, now lives in Calcutta. He has retired from the
army and ies for Indigo. He lls in the gaps in the almost
unbelievable survival story.
‘It was a perfect morning,’ he says. ‘Iremember the date
because the day before had been my birthday, and we had had a
party in our house. I was keeping close tabs on the weather,
because I had to y General Rawat to Itanagar at 8 a.m. There
had been some mist in the morning, but by 7.30 a.m. it had
cleared completely.’
Gen. Rawat, he recollects, had reached the air eld right on
time and had been his usual jovial self. ‘He had been my Brigade
Commander in Congo, so we knew each other well. Soon after
he boarded the chopper, I made my routine brie ng and
informed him that the weather was clear and the chopper had
been checked for all security issues, and asked him for
permission to take o . He nodded.’
The Cheetah lifted in the air as always. Down below, Singh
could see the tops of the hangars where the other choppers were
parked. Right ahead was a deep gorge, not forested but dense
with vegetation. ‘The Dimapur halidome is situated on a ledge,’
Singh explains. ‘It runs along the spine of the mountain, and on
both sides there are deep ravines, which makes it a little risky.
However, at the end of the runway there is a skirting wall that
runs around the entire cantonment.
The chopper had lifted just about seventy feet o the ground
when Singh realized that its engine had failed. ‘Barely six or
seven seconds after takeo , our engine suddenly ceased,’ he
recollects. ‘I was shocked. Just a couple of days back we had
revised the drill and standard operating procedure for
emergencies. Every morning, before take-o , the emergency
drill is revised by pilots. I had been doing it all my life but never
ever thought it would actually happen to me. That morning it
stood us in good stead.’
So when the engine stopped, Singh’s muscle memory kicked
in, and he automatically started emergency procedures. ‘I could
see that if I did not do something fast, the chopper was going to
drop into the gorge, which could be fatal. I immediately tried to
turn it so that it would stay on the helipad, he remembers.
Within seconds, the chopper had crash-landed, but luckily, it
happened on the runway. ‘I tried to cushion the chopper’s fall,
but with a failed engine, there was little I could do. It hit the
ground, bounced o and hit it again. The right skid gave way,
making the aircraft buckle under its own weight.’
The chopper started tilting to its right, which was the side
Gen. Rawat was sitting on. The rotors struck the ground and
twisted, the tail rotor shattered and the fuel tank cracked,
starting a deadly spill on the runway. ‘The tank was full, with
nearly ve hundred litres of fuel. We shut down all electric
gadgets, since a single spark could have blown us up, Singh says.
By that time, the entire emergency response drill had also
kicked in. The area rang out with the screams of re engines
and ambulances. Fire tenders rushed to the spot and started
washing away the leaked fuel. The pilot was the rst to climb
out of the mangled chopper, surprising rescuers, who were
fearing the worst. He was followed by the others: they emerged
one by one, miraculously without any serious injury. Col
Manwal had not fastened his seatbelt properly and was hit on
the head, but other than that he was ne. Neither of the two
pilots had even a scratch on them. Gen. Rawat had su ered the
brunt of the crash, with the entire machine smashing on to his
side. However, he too had just su ered some minor cuts and
bruises.
The pilots were put under observation for twenty-four hours
at the Military Hospital—as is mandatory—after which they
were sent for an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) to Calcutta.
Singh had su ered some compression in his vertebrae but was
soon back on his feet. ‘The smashed Cheetah came to a stop
barely ve metres from the perimeter security wall. Had it
toppled over, the fuel tank would have shattered and doused the
engine, causing an immediate explosion,’
An unru ed Bipin had asked him for another chopper that
would y him to Itanagar. ‘I explained to him that we did not
have another one and also, as per the rules, I would not be able
to y him till I got a medical clearance from the hospital.’ A
helicopter was brought in from Dinjan, and just two hours later,
it took Bipin to Itanagar.
Singh says unpleasant memories of that crash are best
forgotten, but he will always remember General Rawat’s
complete composure after the accident. ‘His uniform had been
burnt in places, there were visible bloodstains but no signs of
fear or anger on his face. He took me aside and said, “Just don’t
worry! These things happen. You did your best, don’t think
about it now.” Gen. Rawat had this incredible ability to stay
calm under all circumstances. He was a tough soldier, recounts
Singh.
 5

‘Hum Sab Fauj Mein Jayenge’

B
rig. Shivender Singh leans back on his sittingroom sofa,
nostalgia clouding his eyes. ‘Bunny was an undisputed
leader, even at thirteen years of age, he says. ‘He was quiet
and self-e acing, but had immense clarity of thought and
courage of conviction from childhood. My most striking
memory of him is of the day in Dehradun when I was just nine
years old, and we received news that my father had lost his life
in the 1971 war.’
Shivender’s father Lt Col Onkar Singh had been commanding
10 Garhwal and leading his men in battle in Chhamb, Akhnoor,
when he had been hit by a bullet. His wife, Mohini, and two
sons had been in 14 New Road Dehradun, Mohini’s parental
house, when they received the news. The 1971 war was the
third one that Col Onkar was ghting in. He had also
participated in the wars of 1962 and 1965, returning injured
from both.

•••
14 New Road Dehradun
December 1971
12 noon
A postman knocks on the door. He has brought a telegram.
The boys see him in his old khaki sweater and pants, opening
the gate and walking in, his woollen cap pulled low over his
ears. ‘He handed over a telegram to someone, and soon the
house was lled with deep sorrow,’ remembers Shivender. ‘I was
surprised to nd my mother sobbing loudly. She held my
younger brother, who was just one, in her arms. Sushila Mausi
[Bipin Rawat’s mother] was trying to console her. Nani was
crying too. Other than that, there was stunned silence all
around.’
Shivender was too young to understand the situation, but he
could sense that something terrible had happened. Everyone
seemed to be speaking in whispers. He was standing outside the
room, scared and confused, when the thirteen-year-old Bipin
walked up to him with his younger brother, Vijay, in tow.
‘Bunny came to me and put his arms around me. He told me,
very matter-of-factly, that my dad had lost his life in battle. “Koi
baat nahi Chotu,” he said. “Mausaji has gone down ghting. We
should be proud of him.”
Seeing the alarmed looks on both his younger brothers’ faces,
Bipin immediately took control of the situation. ‘Ab aisa karna
hai, hum teeno bhi chalte hain fauj mein (Now, the three of us
should join the army). That will be our tribute to Mausaji. Hum
unka naam raushan karenge (We will live up to his name),’ he
declared. When he saw the younger boys looking confused, he
further said, ‘Tum abhi chhote ho. Main lead karunga, tum follow
karna (You’re still too young. I will you lead, you follow).
 Looking back, Brig. Shivender says those were not the empty
words of an emotional teenager; Bipin actually meant what he
said. He had decided his future course of action. And his
inclination to lead was evident since he had decided it for his
brothers as well. Three years later, Bipin cleared the National
Defence Academy entrance exam and went to Khadakwasla. In
the same year, Shivender and Vijay joined the Rashtriya Indian
Military College (RIMC) and Sainik School, respectively. All three
brothers went on to join the Indian Army. While Bipin went on
to be India’s rst Chief of Defence
Sta , Shivender retired as a brigadier and Vijay as a colonel.

A Flashback
In 1958, General Bipin Rawat’s father, then Capt. Laxman Singh
Rawat, was posted at the Indian Military Academy. His wife
Sushila’s family were looking for a groom for her cousin Mohini.
Laxman felt his friend Capt. Onkar Singh, from 10 Garhwal,
who was then posted at the RIMC, was a suitable candidate and
persuaded Onkar to come over to 14 New Road to meet his
wife’s cousin. Onkar, a Jat from Meerut, shyly agreed, and the
two young army o cers came over to the grand old house
where Thakur Kishan Singh and the family lived. The two
youngsters met and liked each other. The family approved of
the handsome captain, and the two were soon married. Later,
they had a son, Shivender, who adored his older cousin Bunny,
and the two became friends for life just as their fathers had
been.
 6

Bipin Joins the NDA

T
owards the end of 1973, while still in Kathua, Col Rawat
got promoted to the Brigadier rank and got posted to
Dalhousie as Commander, 323 Infantry Brigade. He
decided to move his family from Shimla and bring them with
him to Dalhousie. In December 1973, after Bipin completed his
ISC exam from Shimla and Vijay nished class seven, the family
also shifted to Dalhousie. Bipin appeared for the National
Defence Academy entrance exam, which he cleared in the rst
attempt. Vijay was sent to Sainik School, Lucknow, while Kiran
got admitted to Sacred Heart Convent in Dalhousie.
Col Vijay Rawat recollects that while preparing for his Service
Selection Board (SSB) in Dalhousie, Bipin used to go to a physical
training instructor who would make him do the toughest drills,
which included dives, rolls, ips, etc. During one training
session, Bipin sprained his ankle so badly that he wasn’t sure if
he would be able to go for the SSB. But eventually, he did go for
his SSB to Allahabad and went on to join the NDA’s June 1974
batch.
An Unexpected Relegation
In November 1965, Bipin came back home to Dalhousie, at the
end of the third semester at the NDA, and told the family about
his completely unexpected relegation.
‘He could not do a mandatory jump into the swimming pool
and had been relegated because of it” Vijay remembers. ‘I still
don’t know why he could not jump that day in the academy. It
was really surprising. Bunny was a con dent swimmer and had
jumped many times before. We used to go swimming regularly
in Dehradun and also Udhampur. But, for some reason, he
couldn’t jump on that particular day, and it led to his losing six
months of seniority.’
‘I remember Daddy taking it in his stride without any show
of disappointment. He told Bunny, “These things happen in life.
You just have to carry on regardless. »
Bipin took his father’s advice well. ‘There was no visible sign
of low morale. We all just took it on the chin, and he went back
to the academy after his winter break and cleared the jump,’
says Vijay.
However, Bipin did lose six months of seniority to his NDA
course mates. Many years later, in a strange quirk of fate, he
superseded some of them to become Chief of Army Sta .

Dance Nights in Udhampur

In 1976, Brig. Laxman Singh Rawat was posted as Brig. Adm.
(Brigadier Administration), Northern Command, and his wife
and daughter shifted to Udhampur with him. Bipin was still in
the NDA, getting a monthly pocket money of ₹40. Vijay, now in
class nine at Sainik School, Lucknow, was given the option of
coming back home and studying in Central School, Udhampur.
‘I was getting a princely amount of seventy- ve rupees a
month as pocket money, which was even more than Bipin’s, and
so I decided that I would not shift to Udhampur, because then it
would have reduced to zero,’ says Vijay.
So he continued to study in Lucknow. The siblings would
meet during their summer and winter breaks, and Vijay has
some fond memories of those days. ‘We had a lovely time in
Udhampur,’ he remembers. ‘Bunny would come down in his
term breaks, and we would do at least two or three trips to
Vaishno Devi every holiday, going in the morning by bus and
returning in the evening.’
‘Udhampur had a good crowd,’ he adds. ‘There were lots of
kids of our age, and we would roam around together in the
holidays, play tennis and often organize social evenings where
the kids would take care of the entertainment, which would
mostly be songs and dance.’
Both the brothers used to enjoy dancing. Vijay remembers
how they would sometimes pull each other’s leg over wanting
to dance with the same girl. ‘There was this one friend I had.
She was really good-looking, and Bunny would want to dance
with her and so would I,’ he says with a laugh. ‘I would feel that
since she was in the same class as me, I had dancing rights with
her, and Bunny felt that since he was in NDA, he had the right.’
Vijay also remembers how Bipin suddenly picked up height
after he went to the academy. ‘Before
Bunny left for NDA, he was hardly ve feet three inches. I
used to be taller than him. When he came back from NDA, he
had shot up to ve eight.’
 The Udhampur Club had a nice swimming pool, where the
brothers would go for regular swims and try to beat each other
at the number of lengths they could do. Their strong, sunburnt
arms would cut the water in measured strokes as they raced.
Whoever reached the end of the pool rst would turn around
and, shaking water out of his eyes, would look out for the other.

The Notorious Chhotu

While Bipin was always the responsible and sensible older son,
he always stood by his notorious younger brother. Vijay
confesses that he was in and out of trouble all the time. ‘I had so
many scars on my body that I used to be called Rana Sangha in
childhood, he states proudly. In Dehradun, he had been badly
bitten by a neighbour’s ferocious Alsatian, and Bipin and Satpal
mamaji would take him for his fourteen injections. As soon as
that wound healed, he fell upon barbed wire while climbing to
the roof of his house and received a deep gash on his leg, all the
way to the bone. Once again, he had to be given medical help. At
Wellington, he was swinging on the iron gate outside his house,
when the gate fell on him, breaking his leg. In Shimla, he was
caught smoking by Bipin’s classmate who told Bipin and Bipin
informed his mother, which led to Vijay getting a good telling
o when he reached home.
In Udhamputr, he was doing a back ip into the pool one day
when he hit his head against the cemented side, splitting his
head open and had to be rushed to the military hospital. And
much later, when he was commanding his unit, he even got
bitten by a viper that happened to be coiled around a curtain
that he had tried to draw. ‘The snake fell on my leg and bit me,
but its fangs could not inject the venom, and I was back home
the next day after spending a night at the Military Hospital’s
intensive care unit, he recalls. The unfortunate snake was
hunted down and killed, but the next day Vijay started getting
calls from people who said to him, ‘We heard you were bitten by
a snake and the snake died!
In spite of their di erent temperaments, both brothers
remained really close to each other in their growing-up years.
 7

Bloody-Nosed in the IMA

Boxing Ring

8 December 2021
Vivek Vihar
Sector 82, Noida

M
ajor General Shashi Bhushan Asthana, SM, VSM
(retired), took one last look inside his suitcase and
snapped it shut. In half an hour he planned to leave for
the airport, from where he had a ight to Rajkot. His cell was
ringing. Reaching into his pocket, he drew it out. The call was
from Doordarshan. The person calling him wanted to know if
he had heard the tragic news about Gen. Bipin Rawat’s
helicopter crash. He wanted some quotes from Gen. Asthana.
A stunned Gen. Asthana switched on the television. The
story was raging across all the news channels. As he picked up
his suitcase to leave, his mind was still numb with shock. ‘The
rescue team shall nd him alive, he told himself. He knew Bipin
Rawat was not a man who gave up easily. He had always
fought till the last.
 •••
Early 1978
Training area, Tons Valley
Indian Military Academy
Dehradun
The boxing ring is surrounded by second-termers —Gentleman
Cadets who look almost identical, with their crew-cut hair, PT
shorts and excited faces, their skin sunburnt and peeling from
long hours in the outdoors, their muscles stretched taut from
rigorous physical activity. ‘Come on, Rawat! Give up now!’
someone is shouting.
Bipin doesn’t look up. He is bleeding from the nose but
circling his opponent like a prowling tiger. Lean, muscular, with
almost zero fat from his gruelling schedule, he has thrown and
blocked as many punches as he could, but now each jab is
getting harder. His arms feel like lead. His face is swollen. He is
fast running out of energy. His opponent is much stronger than
him. Not only is he bigger, but he also moves really fast for his
size, which has surprised Bipin. The GCs and Directing Sta
watching the match can see who the better boxer is. For every
punch Bipin throws, he is getting two back. The larger boxer
suddenly steps forward and, pivoting on his left foot, bends his
arm 90 degrees, landing a bone-splintering right hook on Bipin’s
left jaw. Bipin nds himself on the oor. He looks up to nd the
referee looking down at him in concern. ‘Do you want to
continue?’ he asks. Bipin can taste blood in his mouth. He
moves his tongue to check if any teeth have been dislodged, but
they appear intact. ‘Do you want to opt out?’ the referee asks
again. Wiping the blood o his face, Bipin pulls himself up back
to his feet and replies, ‘No, sir’
 The round restarts. His opponent steps forward and moves
purposefully in his direction. Spitting blood on the oor, Bipin
rocks on his feet and darts a quick look at the ringside. His
friends from the Zojila company are looking up at him, concern
writ large on their faces, their hope fading. If he loses, they shall
go back disappointed. ‘Rawat, it’s okay. Well played. Ab wapas
aaja (Now return), someone is saying. By the time Bipin notices
his opponent’s muscular arm coming at him and tries to duck, it
is too late. The punch connects, ripping the esh on his cheek.
The rival company cadets roar in anticipated victory.
Bipin can feel his head reeling. His mind is now numb to
pain. Trying desperately to keep his balance, he bites down on
his mouth guard, swings his right arm back and, with all the
strength remaining in his battered body, throws an upper cut at
his adversary. He is surprised to nd that it has connected. And
suddenly, his opponent is lying at on the oor. As he stumbles
forward, Bipin hears the victorious yelling and screaming of his
friends. He cannot believe his eyes. He has won.

Passing Out with the Sword

of Honour
Maj. Gen. S.B. Asthana, Chief Instructor, United Services
Institution of India, sits upright in his o ce chair, looking
dapper in his Gorkha hat and waistcoat, as he time-travels back
to the Dehradun of 1978, when he and Bipin Rawat used to be
course mates and company types from the Zojila company at
the Indian Military Academy.
‘I was twenty, and Bipin must have been a year younger,’ he
says. ‘I remember that boxing bout very clearly. I was not on the
boxing team that day, but I was standing by the ring. In fact,
our entire company had lined up to watch the ght. It was
obvious that the other guy was not just bigger in size but also a
better boxer technique-wise. Nobody expected Rawat to win,
but he just refused to give up. He kept taking a beating, but he
would get up each time he fell, and the bout would go on. And
eventually he won, surprising everybody.’
Though he was just a second-termer, Bipin became the star of
the IMA after that match. The quiet, unassuming cadet, who
generally kept a low pro le, had been recognized as a gritty
ghter who had refused to give up against all odds. ‘The DS
were talking about him, the cadets started looking up to him,
and it gave him instant recognition. He had displayed
exemplary o cer-like qualities, says Gen. Asthana.

‘He Was a Spotlessly Clean

Man’
Bipin Rawat joined the 63 Regular Course at the Indian Military
Academy in January 1978. Since he had come from the NDA, he
joined in the second term, but because he had been relegated,
his NDA course mates were now one course senior to him. He
was given certain privileges of a third-termer. For instance, he
did not have to address third-termers as ‘Sir’, and they would
not rag him like they ragged the others.
Gen. Asthana remembers Bipin as a simple and unassuming
guy. ‘He was a course senior to us, but he never made that
obvious,’ he says. ‘He would do everything that the rest of us
had to do. Sometimes we would get late for class, and the DS
would tell us to get o our bicycles and carry them on our
shoulders. He would do it with the rest of us, uncomplainingly.
And even though his father was a serving Brigadier, he never
made that obvious. We had heard that even in his own house,
he would do his own work and pick up his own luggage, in spite
of the fact that his father had sahayaks (attendants). That was
obviously how he had been groomed. He was humble and
grounded.’
So Bipin Rawat marched down the roads of the IMA in his
beige dungarees, with his course mates by his side, a pithu on
his back and his feet bound in heavy, black DMS boots. He would
sometimes be seen dragging along his black bicycle, or carrying
it over his head. He was quiet and sincere, gritty and
determined. ‘He was easily among the better guys,’ says Gen.
Asthana. ‘And then he got the Sword of Honour too.’

•••
Kritika’s wedding
5 March 2017
Army House
4 Rajaji Marg
Maj. General Asthana parks his car and walks down to Army
House, where shamianas are stretched across the lawns and the
guests have already started collecting. The house is glittering
with strings of lights, and he can see elegantly attired ladies and
men in formal wear, smiling and moving around the place.
Since it is a largely an armed-forces crowd, many of them know
each other. Gen. Asthana spots Brigadier Sohi, Military Attaché
to the Chief, whom he knows from earlier. He steps across to
shake hands.
‘Where is Rawat?’ he asks Brig. Sohi.
 ‘Sir, mujhe bhi dhundna padega (I have to look for him), he
smilingly replies. ‘Today, I am also an invitee.

•••
‘Bipin had taken over as Chief of Army Sta in January. His
daughter Kritika got married in March. There was so much the
army could have done, but he just refused to take any favours.
The arrangements were as simple and a ordable as they would
have been at a Colonel’s daughter’s wedding,’ says Gen. Asthana.
‘Bipin had invited his entire sta as guests, and all
arrangements were being looked after by his family, who could
be identi ed by the identical safas that all the men were
wearing. A civil caterer had been hired to put up tents and make
all arrangements. The guests had been accommodated in a
modest hotel that he had paid for. Bipin Rawat was standing
there in a bright-yellow turban, smiling, personally looking
after each invitee.’
Gen. Asthana says the marriage was a window into the kind
of person Bipin was and into his beliefs. ‘He was a spotlessly
clean man,’ he says. ‘Nobody could question him on his personal
integrity and honesty. It was his daughter’s wedding. As Chief,
he could have utilized so many Army resources. He didn’t even
have to say it. People would have come forward on their own.
But he didn’t do anything of that kind. He was absolutely
honest. He was also conscious that he should not be doing
anything that could lead people to point a nger at him, saying
he had misused his position,’
‘Once He Had Decided
Something, He Was
Unwilling to Change His
Mind’
Gen. Bipin Rawat took many bold decisions during his tenure,
and not all of these were universally liked. He caused a lot of
heartburn in the 1.1 million-strong force by his moves to do
away with the sahayak concept, disallowing golf in active
forward areas of Jammu and Kashmir and Nagaland, and taking
strong measures to get o cers and men o social media, which
had been previously used to honey-trap men in uniform.
Just a few months before he was to retire as COAS, Gen. Rawat
ordered an analysis to understand why the Indian Army’s
pension bill was rising, accompanied by a rise in disability
pension, particularly in non-combat situations. The analysis,
done by Army Headquarters, revealed that a large number of
o cers had claimed disabilities for non-physical injuries, such
as hypertension, diabetes, hearing loss and other ailments. So it
was a clause that was being misused by many, since the army
gives a very generous non-taxable disability pension even for
non-battle casualties, which ranges from 30 per cent to 15 per
cent of last basic pay drawn, depending on the level of
disability. Gen. Rawat had briefed Union Defence Minister
Rajnath Singh, and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had
given a statement in Parliament on not allowing tax exemption
on disability pension. Further reforms were awaited. The move
caused a lot of anger within the army, since it would also a ect
the genuinely disabled.
‘Thad questioned him on why he was trying to cut
everything from the army. “Tu defence civilians ko kuchh kyun
nahi kehta (Why don’t you say something to the defence
civilians)?” I had asked him, to which he had replied, “Wo toh
mere haath mein nahi hai. Main kya karun (That’s not in my
hands. What can I do)?” If he was convinced about something,
he would not listen to anyone. That was Rawat’s personality.
His logic was that he wanted to stop people who were creating a
fake disability and drawing pension for it. I told him he should
sort out those guys and not punish everyone, including those
who genuinely deserved disability pension and concessions. But
he had that typical Gorkha “mancha” mindset; once he had
decided something, he was unwilling to change his mind,’ Gen.
Asthana says.
Many o cers like Gen. Asthana wrote vociferously against
the idea in newspapers and spoke about it on television. The
collective pressure worked, and so far the government has not
implemented what Gen. Rawat had proposed.
Later, when Gen. Rawat became Chief of Defence Sta ,
initiatives proposed by his Department of Military A airs
aimed at increasing the retirement age of o cers and jawans,
and a reduction in pensions of personnel taking premature
retirement. These decisions were also extremely unpopular.
In January 2020, soon after he was appointed CDS, Gen.
Rawat started working on what was to be India’s biggest-ever
military reform: theatre command. He wanted to streamline
coordination between the army, navy and air force, and have
synchronized operations in future wars, as happens in the US
and China. Instead of having them as separate forces, he wanted
to reorganize them into theatre commands that would draw
commanders from all three services.
Gen. Rawat envisioned that the existing seventeen single-
service commands would then be reduced to ve, and the forces
would be able to function with better integration and harmony.
The suggestion did not nd favour with the air force. ‘The air
force had a valid reason to worry, explains Gen. Asthana. ‘They
are short of critical aircraft and other air assets. Most aircraft
are multi-role aircraft. If you give away their already meagre
resources to theatres, how would they look after air defence?’
Gen. Asthana says he did try to reason with Gen. Rawat that
before bringing about a theatre command, he needed to
improve the resources of the air force, but Gen. Rawat was
totally convinced about his decision. To initiate the plan, a joint
three-services course at the Brigadier level was started at the
United Service Institution of India, which is still going on.

‘He Believed His Decisions

Were for the Greater
Common Good’
Gen. Asthana says Bipin was completely aware of the immense
criticism some of his proposals were facing within the forces,
but since he believed they were for the greater common good,
he did not care. ‘The army expects the Army Chief to look after
the army, but Rawat’s approach was a whole-nation approach,
which would upset people in uniform. For instance, he opened
the cantonment roads to civilians, because he felt the citizens of
the country should not be inconvenienced because of the army.
But the fact is that army units are often training inside
cantonments. They have weapons, armouries, exercises going
on, and granting access to just anyone means a Pakistani agent
could make a video or take photographs and send it across.
Similarly, he agreed to give away defence land to the
government. How do we know that the army will not require
additional land for training and exercises, and that it will be put
to better use by the politicians? The idea of land monetization
needed careful scrutiny, as the funds so generated go to the
Consortium Fund of India and not directly to the military,’ feels
Gen. Asthana. He adds that he conveyed these misgivings to
Gen. Rawat, who would just brush them o .
Gen. Asthana believes that Bipin Rawat did not have any
political aspirations or personal motives for these decisions.
‘Rawat was a true nationalist and was convinced that whatever
he was doing was for the good of the country,’ he says. ‘When he
was convinced about something, he had the mental strength,
which his critics used to call arrogance, to not get swayed by
other people’s opinions or criticism,’

‘PM Modi Liked Him a Lot’

Whatever his vision was, the fact remains that Gen. Bipin
Rawat was very popular with the government. ‘Prime Minister
Narendra Modi liked him a lot, and he had reasonable freedom
of action with the PM, which not very many can claim,’ states
Gen. Asthana. He feels this was because Gen. Rawat had learnt
how to handle bureaucrats and politicians, thanks to his long
work experience in Army Headquarters.
“Can I ght with the government and get anything for the
services?” he would often ask, stating how the government was
supreme in a democracy. “When I can’t ght with the
government, I might as well get the best out of them,” was his
logic for going along with what the government said. He would
be nding ways to do things. “Whenever I am working with
politicians or bureaucrats, the moment I nd a block, I try to
nd an alternative route around it instead of banging my head
against the wall,” he would often say. .. As a person who knew
him well, I would say that he certainly did not want to become a
politician, but he also certainly did not want to cross politicians
and make his functioning di cult. He was a practical man, and
he was adopting a practical approach while dealing with
politicians, so that they did not block his moves, Gen. Asthana
explains.

‘He Knew How to Handle

Politicians’
In 2002, then Col Asthana was posted at Army Headquarters,
serving in the Operational Logistics department. Then Col Bipin
Rawat was also at Army Headquarters, serving as Colonel,
Military Secretary Branch 9. His job pro le included
coordinating Military Secretary Branch matters. This was his
second tenure there. About a decade back, he had served in the
Military Operations department as a Major.
Gen. Asthana feels that these interactions taught him how to
handle bureaucrats and politicians. He says, ‘Even in his days as
a Colonel he would say, “Government se kaam karaane ke liye
(To work with the government) you need to know what they
need, then you decide kaam kaise karaana hai (how to make
them work).” He had learnt to sideline his ego. He would say,
“Finally toh undersecretary sign karega, tabhi government
order banega (Once the undersecretary signs, only then would
the government order be ready), so I should not be rigid and be
willing to explain, even if he questions me ten times.’ »

‘He, Too, Faced Failure’

Gen. Asthana also points out how Gen. Rawat had to face his
fair share of disappointments in his career. ‘It wasn’t as if he
was handed everything on a platter or that he got success each
time. He, too, had to face failure, but Rawat handled it very
well.’
As an example, he remembers the time when Gen. Rawat
attempted to go for a UN assignment. Interviews for these are
held at Army HQ, and o cers are selected on merit. ‘When
Rawat was Col MS9, he was under Lt Gen. Richard Khare, who
was MS. Both of them were from the Gorkhas, and one would
have thought it would be easy for Rawat to get selected for a UN
tenure, since MS conducts interviews for the same, but that was
not so. He went for two or three interviews over a period of
three years—from 2002 to 2005—but got rejected every time,
because there would be one o cer better than him who would
get selected. Eventually, he did not get a UN assignment as a
Colonel, but he did not let that deter or disappoint him. He
continued to work hard. He did very well in MS Branch, and
then he moved on. Eventually, as a Brigadier, he did go on a UN
mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he
commanded the United Nations Organization Stabilization
Mission, MONUSCO, and did an excellent job.’
Gen. Asthana also points out how Gen. Rawat never picked
easy tenures. Gen. Rawat was serving at Army HQ when he got
his promotion as a Brigadier. Since he was in MS Branch, he
could have chosen the brigade he wanted to command, but he
picked Rashtriya Ri es, which is an unlikely choice with most
people, and he picked Sopore, which was a hard and active eld.
Gen. Asthana points out that most hardcore soldiers want to
command in eld areas, because there are fewer non-
professional pressures there. You are analysed and judged for
professional issues. ‘Eventually, it was good move for his career
too,’ he says.
Bipin Rawat was an ambitious man. ‘But ambition is not a
bad thing,’ says Gen. Asthana. ‘Most o cers who are doing well
are ambitious. For Rawat, I will vouch for the fact that he never
compromised on anything for that ambition,

Crash site
8 December 2021
Around 12.25 p.m.
Twenty-four-year-old Sangeeta, of Nanjappa Chatram
village, is one of the rst persons to reach the burning
chopper. She joins the others in trying to put out the
raging re by inging buckets and pots of water on it.
There are more blasts as the ames leap higher into the
air. Sangeeta feels she hears someone crying out for
help, but every noise gets drowned in the crackle of
ames. So much heat has been generated that the
villagers cannot get close to the burning chopper, even
though they try.
 8

Ayo Gorkhali!

8 December 2021
Sansad TV Studio
New Delhi

L
t Gen. Rakesh Sharma, former Adjutant General of the
Indian Army and now a renowned defence analyst, was
walking out of the Sansad TV studio, having just
completed an intense interview moderated by Dr Maroof Raza.
Drawing his cellphone out of his pocket, he switched it back on
and was looking at it absent-mindedly when his heart suddenly
missed a beat.
‘Air Force helicopter taking Gen Bipin Rawat and wife
Madhulika to Wellington crashes, said a message ashing on
the screen. Gen. Sharma took amoment to collect his thoughts,
drove down to his house in Greater Noida and, picking up his
wife, headed straight for the Chief of Defence Sta residence at
Kamraj Road.
Hands on the steering wheel of his car, he drove in silence as
his mind travelled back to the year 1979, when he rst saw
Bipin as a young and handsome Second Lieutenant.

•••
Winter of 1979
Amritsar Railway Station
The sun was shining brightly. A young Gorkhali o cer in
combat uniform and DMS boots stood at the platform stomping
his feet impatiently. He was Second Lieutenant Umed Singh
Thapa of 5/11 Gorkha Ri es. He had come to receive 2Lt Bipin
Rawat, the new twenty-one-year-old o cer joining their unit
and had removed his epaulettes, showing his rank, for a reason.
Since Bipin was the son of Brigadier Laxman Singh Rawat,
former Commanding O cer of 5/11 GR, and had also been
awarded the Sword of Honour for topping his course at the
Indian Military Academy, the unit o cers had decided that he
needed to be cured of any airs he might have developed and had
to be brought back to mother earth.
A mischievous plan had been hatched to rag Bipin, and it was
now being put into action. It also added some excitement to the
lives of the o cers and men, who were a little bored with their
staid regimental tenure at Khasa, a small army cantonment
near the Wagah border, about 14 km from Amritsar. Thapa had
driven down to the railway station in a jeep, bringing along a
one-tonne (truck) for Bipin Rawat’s luggage. Being a Gorkhali,
he had been chosen to pose as Bipin’s sahayak.
With narrow, twinkling eyes and a guileless smile, Thapa was
tailormade for the role. All he had to do was remove his rank
insignia. He had been tasked to receive Bipin and steal his
identity card. A delighted Thapa had rubbed his hands in glee
and immediately agreed. The then Commanding O cer of
5/11, Lt Col (later Brigadier) Ravi Devasar, was out of the unit
location for some o cial work that day and completely
unaware of the mischief brewing behind his back.
There was the wail of a horn, and Thapa looked up to nd a
train thundering down the tracks. The noisy steam engine
rushed past him, pulling along its cavalcade of bogies. As the
train whined toa stop, Thapa hastily put on his jungle cap and,
reminding the four Gorkha troops with him to not address him
as ‘Sahab’ in front of Bipin, started walking along the platform
to look for his guest.
‘Pahilo kaksako dibba, he called out, pointing towards the
rst class carriage from where a smartly uniformed and slim
Pahadi o cer was stepping down—beads of perspiration on his
face, cheeks red from the e ort of pulling down his shining
black steel box, which now rested on the platform. Stencilled on
the side of the box, in bold white font, was ‘2Lt Bipin Rawat,
Indian Military Academy, Dehradun to Amritsar’. It left no
doubts about the identity of the o cer who, at that moment,
was busy dragging down a heavy khaki canvas bedroll with
thick leather straps.
Thapa broke into a quick sprint and was there by Bipin’s side
in a ash. ‘Ram Ram, hajur!’ he bellowed, clicking his heels
together and bringing his arms smartly to attention. ‘Ma timro
sahayak hun (I am your sahayak).’
Bipin saluted him back. ‘Tapaiko I card deno parcha. Adjutant
Sahab le mangarnu bhaeko cha (You will need to give me your
identity card. Adjutant Sahab has asked for it), Thapa informed
Bipin in Nepali, blinking innocently. By then, the other soldiers
had picked up the luggage waiting on the platform. Bipin
reached into his pocket and handed over his identity card to
Thapa. Thapa led him to the jeep waiting outside and,
instructing the driver to drive the ‘new saab’ to the unit
location, assured Bipin that he would follow in the one-tonne
along with the luggage.
In twenty minutes, the jeep had driven into the unit location,
where the sentry on duty quickly gave a call to the main o ce,
announcing the new sahab’s arrival. 2Lt (later Lt Gen.) Rakesh
Sharma, also a participant in the mischievous plan, scampered
across the corridor to ensconce himself rmly in the unit
adjutant’s chair just before Bipin marched in. He greeted
Sharma with a crisp salute. ‘2Lt Bipin Rawat reporting, sir!’ he
said.
‘Good morning, Rawat!’ Sharma replied, looking up from the
papers he had pretended to be busy signing. ‘Welcome to the
unit! Let me see your identity card, please.’
A puzzled Bipin replied that he had already handed over his
ID card to his sahayak, who, he was told, would be delivering it
to the adjutant.
‘No one has given it to me, Sharma exclaimed, looking a little
mi ed. ‘Who is your sahayak?’
When Bipin looked unsure, Sharma summoned the boys who
had gone to pick him up from the railway station. ‘Which of
them is your sahayak?’ he asked. A bewildered Bipin could not
identify the man, since all the fair and slim Gorkha boys looked
similar to him. Also, Thapa had not made an appearance at all
in the identi cation parade.
A seemingly exasperated Rakesh Sharma sat tapping his
ngers on the table impatiently as Bipin confessed he could not
identify the man. ‘Well! You seem to have lost your ID card.
That is very careless of you. I am taking this very seriously,’
Sharma told Bipin coldly, hiding a smile. ‘I will have to march
you up to the Commanding O cer.’
A nervous Bipin was taken to the CO’s o ce, where, in the
absence of Col Devasar, Senior Captain Madan Gopal was
comfortably seated on the CO’s chair with a stern expression on
his face and a Lt Colonel’s brand-new epaulettes (borrowed that
same morning from the unit Baniya) sparkling from his
shoulders. ‘You are a Sword of Honour from the academy, right?’
he asked after the introduction had been made, nodding grimly
at the mention of the missing ID card.
When Bipin answered that he had topped his course, Gopal
told him that Bipin would have to complete the Battle Physical
E ciency Test (a two-mile run) to prove how t he was. ‘Since
you are the best in your course, we expect you to nish in the
excellent category,’ Gopal said.
Bipin was driven down to the highway in his uniform,
handed over a 4 kg self-loading ri e (SLR) and told to run
towards the Wagah border, all the way to the turning point, and
to return only after collecting a ticket from the kanchas (boys)
manning it. The two-mile stretch was the unit’s regular
crosscountry route and pre-marked, he was told. Though tired
and frustrated, and with an angry winter sun bearing down
hotly upon his head, Bipin made no excuses and immediately
set o on a quick sprint, returning with the required ticket.
He was surprised to nd that he had not been able to meet
the ‘Excellent’ nish time of fourteen minutes and forty- ve
seconds. The run had taken him longer than that. He did not
know that the crafty ragging team had got the ticket collection
post shifted by 400 yards so he had to run an extra distance,
which increased his timing.
 He was again marched up to the CO, who glared at him darkly
this time. ‘I must say that I am disappointed in you, Rawat. It is
shocking to nd that a Sword of Honour could not make it to
the Excellent category,’ Madan Gopal growled at the shamefaced
Bipin. ‘Just because your father is a Brigadier and an ex-CO
doesn’t mean you will now take it easy and can sleepwalk
through your regimental tenure. Pull up your socks!’
The adjutant marched a morose Bipin out of the CO’s o ce
and told him to report for physical examination to the Military
Inspection (MI) Room, where yet another trickster, 2Lt Utpal
Roy, sat with a borrowed Army Medical Corps badge on his
uniform and a stethoscope hanging casually around his neck.
He was raring to show o his own acting skills.
‘Who are you? I’ve never seen you before,’ he snapped,
playing the absent-minded unit doctor, the moment Bipin
walked in.
‘I am 2nd Lt Bipin Rawat, sir. I have just been posted in’ Bipin
replied.
‘You don’t look happy, my boy. What’s the problem?’ Roy
asked, shining a ashlight into
Bipin’s eyes while pretending to do an ophthalmic
examination.
‘No, sir, lam not happy,’ Bipin replied.
‘Ammm! Roy mumbled, asking him to open his mouth wide
and stick out his tongue. After peering down Bipin’s throat for
what seemed like an eternity, Roy took the spatula o his
patient’s tongue and asked him to close him mouth. ‘And why
are you not happy, my dear?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows.
 His dam of tolerance broken, Bipin gave the overtly
sympathetic Roy a blow-by-blow account of what had
transpired with him. Being a second-generation o cer, familiar
with the ways of the army, he was smart enough to understand
that he was being ragged but had completely run out of
patience. ‘Is this how a young o cer should be treated, sir?’ he
asked, looking harassed.
Roy clicked his tongue in disapproval. ‘Shameful indeed!
These Gorkhas, I tell you! Why did you join this unit at all, my
boy? You shouldn’t have, he muttered sympathetically.
The gullible Bipin immediately opened up his heart to the
kind doctor, the only nice person he had met that day. ‘I wanted
to join Mechanized Infantry, sir’ he said. ‘And being the course
topper, I would have got it too. But Uncle Heera [Lt General R.D.
Heera, then Colonel of the regiment] insisted that I should opt
for 5/11 GR, since my father had commanded it, he replied
honestly.
Roy nodded in sympathy and, after pretending to check
Bipin’s chest with the stethoscope he had till then forgotten to
use, told him that all was well, the medical examination was
over, and he could go to his room.
At lunch that afternoon, CO Col Devasar returned to the unit
and a dining-in was hosted for the new joiner. When Bipin
walked into the mess, the other o cers were already there, this
time in their proper uniforms, wearing their right ranks. He
was greeted with warm handshakes. As he stood in the
gathering with a glass of chilled beer in his hand, the culprits of
the morning misadventure walked up to him one by one,
introducing themselves, mischievous smiles lighting up their
young faces.
 Bipin was surprised to nd Thapa, his missing sahayak,
turning up with shining single stars upon his shoulders. 2Lt
Rakesh Sharma took Bipin’s ID card out of his pocket and
handed it over with a deadpan look on his face. They were both
from Dehradun, both Pisceans with just a year’s di erence in
their ages and their birthdays falling a day apart (Bipin’s
birthday was on 16 March and Rakesh’s on 15 March).
‘Welcome to 5/11 GR, Bipin. Don’t lose your ID card again,’
Sharma said and nally broke into the laughter he had been
controlling since morning.
‘Thank you, sir, Bipin replied with a smile spreading slowly
across his face. It was to be the beginning of a lifelong
friendship between the two of them.
 9

The Bachelor with Gentle

Brown Eyes

L
eaning back on the sofa in his elegant Greater Noida
apartment, Lt Gen (retd) Rakesh Sharma, PVSM, UYSM,
AVSM, VSM, former Adjutant General of the Indian Army,
has an a ectionate smile on his face as he remembers his friend
Bipin, the twenty-one-year-old Pahadi boy with gentle brown
eyes and neat crew-cut hair who had marched into the 5/11 GR
adjutant’s o ce forty-three years back and had saluted him
smartly.
‘I was just a year older than him,’ he says. ‘We had struck up a
friendship almost instantly. The two went on to serve together,
o and on, in the unit, initially as young Second Lieutenants
and then as Commanding O cer and Second-in-Command
(2IC) when Rakesh took over the unit and Bipin became his 2IC.
Much later, the two served together in Delhi, when Lt Gen.
Rakesh Sharma was serving as Adjutant General of the Indian
Army and Lt Gen. Bipin Rawat was appointed Vice Chief of
Army Sta and later Chief of Army Sta . Rakesh had also done a
tenure as ADC with Bipin’s father, Lt Gen. Laxman Singh Rawat.
He was present at Bipin’s as well his sister Kiran’s weddings, and
was by his friend’s side when he lost both his parents.
As 2IC in Binnaguri, with Rakesh as the Commanding O cer,
Bipin would often come to the Sharmas’ house for dinner and
demand to know from Payal Sharma: ‘Ma’am, ye batao dessert
mein kya bana hai (Tell me what’s for dessert)?’ She would
always have an extra serving ready in the fridge that the two
friends would devour after the last guest had left, sitting at the
dining table with spoons in their hands, cracking jokes and
eating straight from the dessert bowl.
‘I would see the two of them in deep discussion, sometimes
agreeing and often disagreeing with each other, lost in erce
arguments. But at the end of it they would come to the dining
table and end the evening with large helpings of dessert. They
both had a sweet tooth,’ Payal recollects with a gentle smile.
Gen. Sharma’s memories go back much further. ‘That day in
Khasa, when we ragged Bipin, he did see through our charade.
He was way smarter than us and, being the son of an ex-CO, he
knew our names from before, but he just played along,’ he says.
‘Later he told me, “Mujhe pata tha aap kaun hai (I knew who you
were).” And we both had a good laugh. The gag just brought us
closer.’

Tripling on a Black Yezdi

Halfway through its Punjab posting, 5/11 GR moved from the
ramshackle Khasa distillery location to Govindgarh Fort near
the Amritsar railway station. While earlier, the young o cers
used to share rundown, crumbling rooms, they now had their
own smartly turned out bachelor pads.
 2Lt Roy had bought a stylish black Yezdi motorcycle, and
often, Roy, Rakesh and Bipin would go tripling on it, jostling
each other for space. ‘We would scout the city restaurants for
interesting meals whenever we needed a break from mess food,
Gen. Sharma remembers.
While the three of them would mostly ride on the same bike,
if another bachelor decided to come along, they would borrow a
scooter from someone or take the unit one-tonne and go
rocking over
Amritsar’s roads in fauji style. The unit one-tonne had been
converted into a fairly comfortable bus, with seats placed along
both sides. The youngsters would pile in and happily be driven
down to the city, jumping out of the back when the truck
parked outside the restaurant they wanted to eat at. Meal over,
they would troop back to the one-tonne and, climbing up one
after another, ask the driver to head back to the cantonment.
Soon, their CO, Lt Col Ravi Devasar, got posted out of the unit,
and Lt Col S.K. Chakravarty took over as the new Commanding
O cer. He appointed Bipin as his Intelligence O cer (IO), while
Rakesh sat on the adjutant’s chair. ‘Bipin was bright and
forthcoming from the beginning, remembers Gen. Sharma. ‘He
was well-read and well-informed, and could chat and converse
on any subject, never hesitating to speak his mind’
Young o cers normally avoid speaking out in the presence of
seniors, but Bipin had no reservations about expressing his
opinion. ‘5/11 hada friendly crowd of senior o cers who
encouraged youngsters to participate in discussions. That was
the culture in our unit,’ Gen. Sharma explains. ‘We didn’t
believe in the maxim that young o cers should be seen and not
heard. They would be asked their opinions during discussions,
and they would be heard’
 This was something that would stay with Bipin all his life. He
always had a reputation for plain-speaking, even as he rose
through the ranks and was expected to be more diplomatic. He
would express his opinion clearly and bluntly, whether he was
addressing army gatherings or the media, or even interacting
with his own family members, who always preferred to
approach his wife rather than him when it came to asking for
any kind of favours. Madhulika would be sweet and
sympathetic, and would convey the requirements to Bipin
seeing the right time and mood. Sometimes he would get
convinced and sometimes he wouldn’t. He never learnt the art
of diplomacy and would often be criticized for being brash
when he was only being forthright, without bothering about
the fact that he might be judged for it.
‘Yes, he spoke his mind all his life, starting from when he was
just a Second Lieutenant,’ agrees Gen. Sharma. ‘And why not?
He was intelligent, sharp, con dent. He had studied at the best
schools in the country. What’s more! He was a Sword of Honour,
the top man in his course.’ He emphasizes that even though
Bipin had come to the unit with a Sword of Honour tag, he still
had to validate his worth in front of the troops.

Earning the Respect of

Gorkha Troops
The Gorkhas had the reputation of being gutsy warriors, and
Bipin would have to prove the same to them before earning
their respect. Which he did very soon. The opportunity came
when the unit was sent on a canal-crossing drill, a common
infantry war preparedness exercise in the western sector
(Punjab and Rajasthan), where the ditch-cum-bund (DCB)
system of warfare is propagated. Soldiers have to cross a water
body that cannot be surmounted by a tank and then attack the
enemy, who is expected to be on a raised piece of land behind it.
The Gorkhas, hailing from the hills, are not natural
swimmers, and so the troops were apprehensive about getting
into the water. Bipin volunteered to go rst. Clad in his combat
uniform, with his ri e and backpack on his back and a thick
rope tied around his waist, he swam across the nallah, his
strong strokes pushing his lithe body forward, against the
raging current. He climbed out on the other side with his
uniform soaked and boots dripping water. Using one hand to
wipe the spray o his face, he untied the rope wound around his
waist and secured it to a tree trunk. The other end of the rope
was being held by the Gorkha troops on the other bank, who
then tied it up and got into the water one by one and swam
across the canal, using the rope for support against the fast ow
of the water.
‘Bipin was a good swimmer. He was quick to volunteer for the
task. I saw him swimming across the canal with the rope tied
around his waist, after which the rest of us crossed over. His
courage was immediately recognized by the Gorkha troops,
known for their own fortitude,’ remembers Gen. Sharma. ‘He
did very well in whatever event he participated in. When he
took the unit for a minelaying comp, we came rst or second, I
am forgetting exactly what, but we did superbly well. He
subsequently topped almost all his courses.’

Taking a Convoy to
Uttarkashi
In 1982, the dynamic Lt Col Abjeet Mamik took over 5/11 GR,
and the young Captains got to serve with their third
Commanding O cer. Col Mamik would have a deep in uence
on both Bipin and Rakesh, and Mrs Bubbles Mamik looked upon
the two of them as her own boys.
Soon, the unit received move orders to Harsil, an army
cantonment on the banks of the Bhagirathi River in Uttarkashi
district of Uttarakhand, just 100 km from the China border.
Rakesh handed over the Adjutant’s charge to Bipin and moved
out as O cer Commanding (OC), Advance Party. Bipin came to
Dehradun with the unit on the army special train, from where
he took a convoy to Uttarkashi, which was about 78 km from
Harsil. In winters, the unit stationed at Harsil would come
down to Bhatwari, since it would start snowing and
temperatures would dip below freezing point. In summers, they
would move back to Harsil.
For Bipin, it was a homecoming of sorts, since his mother
belonged to Thati, a small village in Uttarkashi. He and Rakesh
made a trip to Thati during the tenure, and the elders in the
village were delighted to see that the six-month-old baby with
fat pink cheeks, whom they had last seen in his mother’s lap
more than two decades back, had grown into this strapping
young army o cer.
One of the high points of Bipin’s Harsil tenure was a
presentation on contemporary China in early 1982 that he and
Rakesh jointly made for the entire command at Joshimath.
While the two of them were keynote speakers, Col Mamik acted
as their moderator.
‘Part of that show was about the ’62 war, but largely it was
about how C hina was changing, remembers Gen. Sharma. ‘ ‘Col
Mamik made us sit down and read books on C hina that he had
got for us from Delhi. Both of us would meticulously go through
these, make det tailed notes in pencil, exchange ideas, script our
presentations, make corrections. It inculcatedit n us the habit of
reading, which continued all our lives.’
Much to Col Mamik’s satisfaction, his two youngsters worked
really hard, burnt the midnight oil, and the show turned out to
be a phenomenal hit.
Sixteen years later, in 1998, when Col Rakesh Sharma was
commanding 5/11 GRin Binnaguri and Bipin was his Second-
in-Command, the two of them again made a similar
presentation on China, which too received praise at the highest
level. ‘Thanks to these two literary events, our information
about China was really detailed, not just in terms of border
disputes but also in terms of their politics. In fact, we had been
exposed to both our neighbours, since we had been at the
Pakistan border in Amritsar and at the China border in Harsil,
explains Gen. Sharma. All this in-depth research would lead to a
continuing interest in both countries that helped Bipin take
informed decisions regarding China as well as Pakistan when he
became COAS and later CDS.

Bogra Day Celebration

Meanwhile, back in December 1982, 5/11 GR organized the
inaugural function of Bogra Day, the battalion’s Battle Honour.
It commemorated one of the ercest battles of the 1971 war
that had been fought by the Gorkhas. Tasked with capturing the
strategic town of Bogra in what was then East Pakistan, the unit
had managed to achieve the seemingly impossible on the
morning of 16 December 1971 through sheer grit and fear
instilled in the enemy largely by extensive use of Molotov
cocktails (a hand thrown incendiary weapon also called petrol
bomb), since the Pakistanis were mortally afraid of death by
 re, which they believed would consign them to hell. The same
evening, at 4.41 p.m., the Eastern Command of the Pakistan
Army signed the surrender agreement. For this phenomenal
victory, 5/11 GR were awarded the Battle Honour Bogra and the
Theatre Honour East Pakistan. They were also awarded three
Vir Chakras: then CO, Lt Col FT. Dais; Maj.
A.S. Mamik; and Maj. J.B.S. Yadava were the recipients.
Lt Gen. F.T. Dias, who had commanded the unit during that
battle, was present at the function in 1982, as were Lt Gen.
Sushil Kumar, Colonel of the Regiment, and Col Mamik, who
happened to be the CO of the unit. It had taken eleven years for
the unit to get recognition, and a grand function was organized
in Uttarkashi. ‘It was a big day for us. We put inall our e ort to
organize the event, which turned out to be a grand success,’
shares Gen. Sharma.
Twenty-nine years later, on 3-4 December 2021, Chie! of
Defence Sta General Bipin Rawat, PVSM, UYSM, AVSM, YSM,
SM, VSM, ADC, would be the chief guest at the 5/11 Gorkha
Ri es Bogra Day Golden Jubilee celebration in Delhi. He would
drink and dance and smile, with his arms around the men he
considered his brothers in arms. Four days later, he would be
gone in a freak helicopter crash.
 10

Like Father, Like Son

Mumbai
1983

E
very morning at 6 a.m., two smartly turned-out o cers
from 5/11 GR would report to Col S.K. Jaitley,
Commanding O cer of 9 Dogra, the unit located at the
beachside US Club. Dressed in their combat uniforms, they
would stand by for instructions for training, which would last
till 8.30 a.m. and would mostly involve getting familiar with
the use of mortars and recoilless ri es.
While Capt. Rakesh Sharma was aide-de-camp (ADC) to Gen.
Laxman Singh Rawat (Bipin’s father), who was posted in
Mumbai, Capt. Bipin Rawat had taken two months’ leave and
come down from Harsil, where he was serving with his unit.
Both friends were being trained for the Battalion Support
Weapons (BSW) course, a precursor to the compulsory Junior
Command (JC). ‘We should have done it earlier, but since the
unit could not spare us from Amritsar, we were being sent now.
Col Jaitley was giving us a pre-course training,’ recollects
 Gen. Sharma, time-travelling back to his days as a young
Captain. After their sixty-day pre-training had ended, both
o cers were sent to Mhow for the four-month BSW course, and
much to Gen. Laxman Singh Rawat’s satisfaction, both returned
with wide smiles and ‘Instructor’ grades.
When Rakesh was still at Harsil, Gen. Rawat had asked him if
he would like to come to Mumbai as his ADC. Bipin had urged
him to take on the appointment. ‘Arre, sir, jao,’ he had insisted,
and Rakesh had agreed. In the years that followed, Rakesh had
started looking upon the Rawats as his own family. Bipin was
already a good friend; now he got to know Gen. and Mrs Rawat
better too. He was ADC for three and a half years, and became
like ason to them, to the extent that when Gen. Rawat was
losing his memory in the latter days of his life, he would call out
for Rakesh repeatedly, saying, ‘Sharma kahan hai (Where is
Sharma)?’ and would demand to know why Rakesh hadn’t come
to see him.
‘Treceived a lot of a ection from them, acknowledges Gen.
Sharma. He says both he and his wife were privileged to learn
from the exemplary qualities of the Rawat couple and to
witness the ne bond that existed between Bipin and his
parents.
‘Gen. Laxman Rawat was a great man,’ he says. ‘Both he and
Mrs Sushila Rawat had great honour and integrity, and were
almost saintly in their attitude towards life. I have served with
many Generals but never felt anyone coming close to them in
my entire career’
Gen. Sharma says he never saw Gen. Rawat lose his temper.
‘He was calm, collected, focused, dedicated to his work and had
an uprightness that had passed down to Bipin as well. Bipin had
imbibed the culture of his parents. He displayed exactly the
same moral character as his father.’
Gen. Sharma says that in the following years, when he
worked closely with Bipin Rawat, he often saw re ections of the
father in the son. ‘In matters of honour and integrity, Bipin was
the same as his parents. They would treat anyone who
approached them with respect and so would Bipin. Even when
he was Vice Chief and later Chief, with a dozen important issues
playing on his mind, there was never an instance of anyone
having to wait for taking an appointment with him. If someone
wanted to meet him, he was always available. We never heard
from his o ce, “Chief busy hain.”
In fact, on what was to be the last day of their lives, Gen. and
Mrs Rawat were leaving their house for the airport when the
recently retired Subedar Major of 5/11 GR dropped by to meet
them. Despite being in a hurry, the couple stopped to talk to the
SM and his wife, and took out time for a photograph as well.
That remains the last picture of the couple.
Just like his father, Bipin also genuinely cared about people.
‘There were instances when Bipin would be crossing a Defence
Security Corps soldier on duty and would just stop by for
amoment to ask, “Haan, kya haal hai bacche? Sab theek hai (Yes,
how are you, kid? Everything all right)?” A soldier limping by
would catch his attention. “Kya ho gaya, langda ke kyun chal
raha hai (What happened? Why are you limping)?” he would
ask, genuinely concerned about the welfare of the men serving
with him. He also did not make any unnecessary demands on
anyone. He would never want to disturb a senior o cer on his
visits, always insisting that even a soldier or a youngster could
be detailed to brief him or accompany him on o cial
assignments. He rmly believed in being accessible and letting
everyone have an opportunity to speak and interact with him.
He was as much a soldier’s Chief as he was an o cer’s. These
were the qualities he had learnt from his parents, both of whom
were extremely grounded people,’ says Gen. Sharma.

Moist Eyes at Sister’s

Wedding
Gen. and Mrs Rawat’s daughter, Kiran, Bipin’s younger sister, got
married in 1985. The groom, Bikram, was the son of Brig. Nathu
Singh, former Director General, Ordnance. It was an arranged
marriage. A meeting between Kiran and Bikram had been
organized in Mumbai, where Kiran’s father had been posted. She
had been doing medicine from Jammu Medical College, while
Bikram had been working in the US. By the time the marriage
was xed, Gen. Rawat had moved to Bhatinda as General
Commanding O cer, 10 Corps. Rakesh had accompanied him
there as his ADC. He shares some fond memories. ‘Kiran got
married on 10 March 1985. Since the Corps was still coming up,
General and Mrs Rawat were staying in a three-bedroom Major’s
accommodation in the cantonment. The house had a big lawn,
and that was where the wedding took place.’
Bipin, then a Captain, took leave and came to Bhatinda for his
sister’s wedding. He and Rakesh were tasked with driving down
to Hisar to receive the baraat, following true Indian hospitality
customs. They started early and took turns at the wheel,
reaching the ITDC hotel, where lunch had been organized well
in time. The baraat came from Delhi—the groom’s family lived
in Green Park. The two young o cers received them
courteously and looked after them. ‘Since Bipin was serving in
Har-sil, and I had been with his parents in Bhatinda, I knew the
groom’s side better than he did. I had even been to Green Park
with Gen. Rawat in the days when the marriage was being
nalized, says Gen. Sharma with a laugh.
The two of them then escorted the baraat back to Bhatinda,
where the guests were put up in the National Thermal Power
Corporation guest rooms and at a hotel outside the cantonment
that had been booked for them. The pheras were conducted at
the Rawat residence, where Rakesh watched Bipin getting
emotional at his sister’s vidai, though trying his best to hide it.
‘Bipin was a sentimental man but did not usually show it.
When Kiran was leaving, he had tears in his eyes, remembers
Gen. Sharma.
The most remarkable thing about Kiran’s wedding was that
despite being in a position of privilege, Gen. Rawat was certain
that he would not take any favours from the army: ‘My daughter
is getting married. I shall pay for everything. I don’t want to
take anything from the Corps.’ Though the accommodation was
expensive, every bill, every penny was accounted for and paid
by Gen. Rawat. ‘It was such a great learning for Bipin and me.’ In
fact, when Gen. Bipin Rawat was COAS and his elder daughter,
Kittu, got married, he faithfully followed his father’s example.
He did exactly the same thing as his father had done. No army
facilities were used. The entire baraat was put up at the Lemon
Tree Hotel in Delhi, and Bipin paid every single bill.
Bipin was also very close to his parents and siblings. Theirs
was a simple, close-knit family. That was true for his own
family as well, when he married the lovely Madhulika and they
had two beautiful daughters. While he was on his postings,
Madhu and their two daughters moved in with his parents at
their Noida home. The gentle and considerate Madhu looked
after her ailing mother-in-law and later her father-in-law when
he started su ering from dementia. When the disease got
worse, Bipin took Gen. Laxman Rawat along to Uri, where he
was serving as General O cer Commanding, 19th Infantry
Division. His younger brother Vijay’s son also stayed with
Madhulika when he was doing his graduation from Amity
College, Noida. He later went on to join 5/11 Gorkha Ri es.
In a happy coincidence, many years later, when Rakesh got
posted as Brigadier General Sta (BGS) 10 Corps and came to
Bhatinda, he was allotted the same house that General and Mrs
Rawat had stayed in during Kiran’s wedding. Bipin visited the
Sharmas in that phase and stayed with them to revive old
memories.

Crash site
8 December 2021
Around 12.30 p.m.
The helicopter keeps burning. Massive red ames lick
the misty sky, cutting through the translucent haze.
There are more blasts. ‘We carried large pots and kept
pouring water, but we couldn’tgo too close. It was too
hot,’ says Raja, a sanitation worker with the Coonoor
Panchayat.
Rescue operations are hampered since the crash has
taken place in the middle of a forest replete with
thorny bushes, nearly 6 km away from the closest road.
It takes almost ten minutes for people from around the
area to start collecting at the crash site. A labourer,
also named Raja, gets a call from his friend in Kattery
and reaches the spot in ten minutes. ‘We saw a person
who was on re but alive,’ he says. ‘He waved his hand
like he was calling for help. So my friends and I pulled
him out and used a bedsheet to carry him up the hill to
the road’
 11

‘I’m Here with a Marriage

Proposal’

Tons Valley
Indian Military Academy
Dehradun
Summer of 1985

T
wenty-seven-year-old Captain Bipin Rawat, instructor at
the Army Cadet College, is deeply engrossed in a weapons-
training class he is taking when he notices that the
attention of his cadets is straying. About to give them a piece of
his mind, he stops speaking, feels a presence behind him and
turns to see who it is. Lt Vijay Rawat, the notorious Chhotu, his
younger brother, stands there with his hands in the pockets of
his pants, grinning from ear to ear.
‘What are you doing here?’ Bipin asks him curtly. ‘Aren’t you
supposed to be at MCEME [the Military College of Electronics
and Mechanical Engineering, Secunderabad]?’
‘Im here with a marriage proposal for you, Bunny, Vijay
shoots back, waving an envelope in the air. ‘Photo bhi hai.
Dikhaun (There’s a photo as well. Wanna see)?”
An embarrassed Bipin hopes the cadets have not heard it. ‘I
am busy right now. You go and wait in my room,’ he whispers.
‘I’ll come there as soon as my class gets over.
With that he hands over a key to Vijay, telling him to go to
Collin’s Block, and turns his attention back to the cadets, who
have noticed the physical similarity between the two and are
placing bets that they are brothers.
‘Collin’s Block now houses only cadets, but back then, a wing
was reserved for sta quarters, and that was where Bipin was
staying,’ says Vijay, remembering how he acted as the
messenger boy when Madhulika’s proposal came for his brother.
‘I was doing my degree course at MCEME, and we had our
summer break, so I was on my way to Dehradun. Dad was
serving as Corps Commander, 10 Corps, in Bhatinda, but
happened to be in Delhi for some work. Since I was crossing
Delhi, he’d asked me to come see him.’
It was around the same time that Madhulika’s father had
proposed a match between his daughter and Bipin. Gen. Rawat
liked the proposal and had written a detailed letter to Bipin,
giving details about the girl and her family. He wanted Vijay to
take the letter to Dehradun and hand it over to Bipin, along with
a photograph of the girl.
Vijay took the sealed envelope and boarded a Delhi Tourism
Corporation bus to Dehradun at the Inter-State Bus Terminal.
‘Being an o cer anda gentleman, I resisted all temptation to
open it, he says. ‘I went to Nanaji’s 14 New Road bungalow, and
the very next day, after a hefty breakfast, I took a shared
autorickshaw from Jhanda Chowk. It dropped me o at the
gates of the Indian Military Academy,
 When Bipin got back to his room during the lunch break,
Vijay handed him the letter from their father, egging his
brother on to open it. A self-conscious Bipin slit open the
envelope, and a picture tumbled out. It was a colour photograph
of a pretty girl wearing a sari and an endearing smile.
‘If you like the girl, take a day’s leave and come to Delhi. You
both can meet and talk and take a decision, Gen. Rawat had
written, leaving the choice of further action with Bipin. His job
done, Vijay left. After his vacation got over, he went back to
Secunderabad to complete his degree.
Bipin liked the girl. She was Madhulika Raje Singh, the
twenty-twoyear-old daughter of Mrigen-dra Singh, the
riyasatdar of the Sohagpur riyasat in Shahdol district of Madhya
Pradesh. Her father was also a Congress MLA from the district
in 1967 and 1972. Madhu had done her schooling from
Gwalior’s Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya and then moved to Delhi,
where she studied psychology at Daulat Ram College.
There had been no dearth of proposals for Gen. Laxman
Singh Rawat’s son Bipin, an eligible bachelor and a handsome
Captain in the army who came from a renowned family of
Garhwal. But it was fate that brought Madhu and Bipin together.
Bipin’s mother’s family had been close to the owners of Banjara
Estate in Dehradun. They had a daughterin-law named Prabha
Devi, who belonged to Rewa district of Madhya Pradesh.
Prabha’s father happened to be a friend of Madhulika’s father.
Prabha was the one who suggested Bipin as a match for
Madhulika.
Bipin and Madhu liked each other’s photographs, and a
meeting was set up between them. Many years later, Madhu
talked to Col Satpal Parmar, Bipin’s maternal uncle, about that
rst meeting with her future husband. She laughingly admitted
that both she and Bipin were so shy that other than an
exchange of very formal ‘hellos’ and ‘how are yous’, the two had
no conversation that day. However, they both liked each other
and conveyed acceptance to their respective fathers. Since the
families already approved of the match, the marriage was xed
for 14 April 1986.

A Perfect Match between

Two Simple People
13 April 1986
Bhatinda
A few private cars and a busload of baraatis were slowly making
their way from Bhatinda, Punjab, to Delhi. They were on their
way to the Kanishka hotel, where arrangements had been made
for their stay. The marriage venue was 25 Ashok Road, a large
bungalow rented by Madhulika’s family. The bus stopped at a
resort near Sirsa for lunch.
‘Since my brother was getting married, I was really excited. I
had organized some cases of beer and some bottles of Scotch for
my cousins,’ remembers Vijay.
But Gen. Rawat, knowing his younger son’s reputation for
mischief, had deliberately not made him in-charge of the liquor
quota, which was being handled by the responsible and reliable
Capt. Rakesh Sharma, who was Gen. Rawat’s ADC.
The baraatis reached the hotel in the evening, where Vijay
and his cousins immediately got down to the serious business
of drinking. ‘Since I wanted to save my own liquor, I went across
to Capt.
 Sharma and said, “Sir, kuch bottle Scotch de do (Give us some
bottles of Scotch),’ Vijay confesses with a laugh.
Rakesh handed one bottle to him with a stern, ‘Bas, ab aur
nahi milegi (No more).
Vijay made a sad face and got back to his gang. ‘I already had
two bottles, so all of us sat in one of the rooms and had a party.
We ordered some food and hada good time. Around midnight,
we went down to the lobby and roamed around, he says.
When he got back to Bhatinda after the wedding, Sushila
Rawat, who had not gone in the baraat, called him to her room.
‘Mom had heard that we had got drunk and were roaming in the
hotel lobby, and she gave me a solid piece of her mind,’ Vijay
says.
A self-conscious Bipin was brought for the haldi ceremony
the next morning, and around 7 p.m., the baraat left for the
marriage venue, which was quite close to the hotel.
‘I recollect my sister Kiran was so decked up that guests in the
hotel thought she was the bride and wanted pictures taken with
her. We had to tell them that she was not the bride but the
groom’s sister, and drag her away,’ shares Vijay.
Bipin wore a cream-coloured sherwani , with some golden
embroidery on it, and an elegant safa. He made the perfect
contrast to Madhulika, who was dressed in a beautiful red
lehenga. During the jaimala, Bipin had Vijay whispering ercely
in his ear, ‘Pair mat kheenchne dena, joote mat utaarne dena
(Don’t let anyone take o your shoes). But despite Vijay’s
constant vigil, the girls from Madhulika’s family managed to
hide Bipin’s shoes when he took them o while sitting for the
pheras.
 ‘I think I was distracted looking for whisky when that
happened, Vijay jokes. ‘I don’t know how much he gave for the
shoes. He didn’t tell me’
The wedding ceremony went on through the night, and after
the pheras got over, early morning around 4 a.m., the close
family returned to the hotel.
When Vijay got back to his room, he was surprised to nd
someone already asleep in his bed. It turned out to be Capt.
(later Gen.) Surinder Mehta, his own course mate. Mehta had
joined 5/11 GR and had been sent to o cially represent the unit
at Bipin’s wedding.
‘He had reached so late that he missed the wedding and was
so tired that he just fell asleep on my bed,’ says Vijay. ‘When
Mehta saw me glaring at him, he woke up and o ered to sleep
on the sofa, but I told him not to bother since I had to go back to
Bhabhi’s place for a puja after taking a bath’
After breakfast, the baraat left for Bhatinda with the
beautiful bride and the delighted groom, where an eager Sushila
Rawat was waiting to receive them with a traditional puja. A
few days later, a simple reception was held in Bhatinda, at the
residence of the GOC (where the Rawats’ daughter, Kiran, had
also got married), and Madhulika was introduced to Bipin’s
friends and family. Gentle and caring by temperament, she
immediately became a favourite with everyone. Not only was
she an understanding partner to Bipin, but she was also a loving
mother to their two daughters, Kritika and Tarini, and a very
devoted daughter to her in-laws. She stayed with them in their
Noida house after Gen. Laxman Singh Rawat retired and nursed
them in their old age, continuing to be by their side till the time
they passed away.
 It was only after these responsibilities had been taken care of
that she went to stay with Bipin and took on the mantle of the
rst lady with grace and charm. She was by his side as he rose in
rank and service and took over the highest appointments in the
Indian Army.

Madhulika
Madhulika or Madhu or Muddy—as her closest friends from
school called her—was a sweet girl. Though she came from an
illustrious family and was married to the highest-ranking
o cer in the Indian defence forces, she continued to be her
humble, grounded self, which was something she had in
common with her famous husband.
‘Both Muddy and Bipin were really simple people, says Sonal
Bole, one of Madhulika’s best friends from Scindia. The two had
been friends ever since they were ten-year-olds, having taken
admission in the fourth standard. Sonal remembers Madhu as a
happy, bubbly girl who loved needlework and hated maths. ‘She
would get along with everybody, and even when Bipin became
Army Chief, she remained the same friendly person. We would
all be welcome to her house,’ says Sonal.

The Quiet, Smiling Bipin

She remembers staying at Army House with her childhood
friend. They would get chikki and khakra for Bipin, who would
keep the snacks in jars by his bedside, since he was fond of
midnight snacks when he was working. At dinnertime she,
Madhu and Tarini would sit at the dinner table in their pyjamas
and sweatshirts, with a smiling Bipin turning up in his formal
shirts and trousers.
‘Bipin did not speak much. He would just smile when we
pestered him with, “Bipin, tell na, what’s happening between
India and Pakistan,” Sonal says.
She remembers one particular occasion when Bipin spoke
about Prime Minister Narendra Modi with great regard. At their
daughter Kritika’s wedding reception in Mumbai, Bipin and
Madhu were sitting at the same table as Sonal and her husband.
Bipin mentioned a ight he had recently taken, with the prime
minister and the agriculture minister both on board. ‘He said
that PM Modi took a forty- ve-minute nap on the aircraft, had a
meeting with the agriculture minister and then a meeting with
Bipin, back to back. Bipin said that the prime minister was
completely updated on what points he wanted to discuss, had
full faith in Bipin’s viewpoint and left the decision-making
completely to Bipin, saying that as Army Chief Bipin obviously
knew best. Bipin was very appreciative of this completely
professional attitude in a political leader, says Sonal.
Sonal also remembers how proud Bipin was of his troops. ‘He
said that the Indian Army is made of brave men who will give
their lives for their country, but the world is advancing very
fast, and future wars will not be fought on the ground but more
in terms of technology, which is why we need technological
upgrades.’ That was one of the rare occasions when Bipin sat
down at leisure and spoke about his profession, Sonal admits,
since he was always very busy.
‘Madhu was really excited about the house they were
planning to build in Dehradun, where they wanted to shift to
after his retirement. But they did not plan to take anything
from the o cial residence,’ Sonal says. ‘In fact, Madhu had
shown me how Bipin had got all the furniture in Army House
stamped, so that it always stayed in Army House and could not
be pilfered at any point of time.’
She also recounts how Bi pin had cut down extra expenditure
at Army House, starting with the Army Day lunch that was
traditionally hosted by the Army Chief. ‘Till then t! he food
would be catered from a ve-star hotel and would cost around
₹1500 per person, but after Bipin took over, he said that instead
of hotels the lunch would be catered by the army mess. He was
really pleased when the per person expenditure came down to a
third of what it had cost earlier. It became a “for the Army, by
the Army” event.’
According to Sonal, Madhulika was nervous about being a
senior o cer’s wife in the army. ‘She did not enjoy stardom.
Even Bipin didn’t. They were earthy people, not socialites, and
Muddy would often say that her husband was “married to the
country” ‘
‘Muddy was a good human being, a loving friend, a devoted
wife and daughter-in-law, and a caring mother, says Sonal. ‘She
will always be missed,’
 12

Dancing on a Plastered Leg,

under the Enemy’s Nose

8 December 2021
Secunderabad

C
ol Durga Prasad was about to sit down for lunch when he
saw a message ash on his cell phone. ‘Bipin’s helicopter
has gone missing, someone had posted on the 5/11
Gorkha Ri es WhatsApp group. A shocked Durga opened the
chat to nd that o cers were responding to the message.
Apparently, the news was all over the media. He walked over to
the television set and switched it on. Images of Bipin Rawat
were ashing on the screen: happy, smiling, proud in his
Gorkha hat and uniform. Col Durga’s mind was diving into its
own bank of memories. He remembered a younger Bipin, in the
same hat, smiling that same slightly lop-sided smile many years
back.

•••
October 1987
Uri Jammu and Kashmir
5/11 GR battalion location
Unit adjutant and Alfa Company commander Maj. Bipin Rawat
is limping forward with a purposeful glint in his eye, a stick
supporting the weight falling on his plastered foot. Lt Col Durga
Prasad, o ciating Commanding O cer, looks at him warily.
Dussehra celebrations have just got over, and Durga is planning
to retire to his room for a desperately needed siesta— brought
on by beer, a big lunch and some vigorous, high-energy foot-
shaking.
‘Sir, I have to go and celebrate Dussehra with my company
boys,’ Bipin says, as enthusiastic as a schoolboy. Durga looks at
Bipin’s plastered foot. He had cracked his ankle during a walk a
few days back and had been advised complete bed-rest by the
unit doctor, with instructions to be on six weeks of sick leave,
since he was temporarily ‘Low Medical Category’ and not t to
serve in the forward area. Bipin had refused outright and,
instead, submitted a signed a davit saying he was staying back
in Uri against the doctor’s advice, at his own risk. And now, he
wanted to go up to Chakothi, the Alfa Company post, much
ahead and right on the Indo-Pakistan border.
‘No, you can’t go,’ Durga tells him, pointing towards the
injured foot. ‘You can’t even walk properly. How will you
climb?”
‘Arre, sir! Please, permission de do. I will handle everything,’
Bipin pleads. He keeps pleading and cajoling till Durga nally
gives way. At last light, around 5 p.m., the 5/11 jazz band, two
Nepali singers and a pleased Bipin pile on a one-tonne truck
and, with headlights switched o , drive away on the road that
leads to Chakothi and is under direct enemy observation. They
reach the road head, where the vehicle is parked, in about forty-
ve minutes. Thereafter, it is a 6 km uphill climb to the post,
where the Jhelum River enters India from Pakistan, and the two
neighbours sit with their guns aimed at each other.
News has reached the kanchas, who are thrilled to know that
their Company Commander is on his way to meet them. Some
of them have come down to the road. They carry Bipin up to the
post in the true Gorkha spirit of ‘Ho ki hoina? Ho! Ho! Ho! (Is he
the greatest or not? Yes, he is! Yes, he is! Yes, he is!)’
‘With the jazz band playing Nepali songs, and the boys
singing and dancing right under the Pakistanis’ trained guns,
he celebrated Dussehra with his company,’ recounts a nostalgic
Col Durga Prasad, sitting in his Secunderabad home. ‘We were
face to face with Pakistan on that post, but luckily they were so
intimidated by the formidable Gorkha reputation of cutting
heads o with khukris that they did not initiate any ring’
At 1 a.m. the next day, Bipin was back, very pleased with
himself and happy to have met the men he loved so much. ‘He
was like that, Col Durga remembers with an a ectionate smile.
‘Once he set his mind to something, he would just go ahead and
doit.

A Quick Trip to Vaishno

Devi
Col Durga recounts an evening in Khasa, Amritsar. It was a
Friday evening. Bipin, as a young Second Lieutenant on his rst
posting, was a few drinks down and decided he was going to
Vaishno Devithe next morning. He asked all the bachelors
drinking with him if anyone would accompany him, but they
all refused to be a part of the crazy plan.
 ‘He kept on trying to make us change our minds. And nally,
I told him I would come with him, not because I was religious
but because I wouldn’t let him do it alone, says Col Durga.
The next morning, the two got into their civvies and left the
cantonment at dawn. They hitched a ride in an auto rickshaw to
the Amritsar bus stand, took a bus to Jammu, then a jeep to
Katra and started walking up to the temple by the shorter but
tougher route around 11 p.m. They reached the temple, did
their darshan and then walked back through the night, again by
the di cult route, and took a jeep taxi to Jammu.
‘We went to a unit o cer’s house there, had drinks and a
good hearty lunch, and then boarded a civil bus to Amritsar,
says Col Durga. They reached their rooms late at night and were
present for the Monday morning PT parade at 6 a.m.
‘People couldn’t believe that we had done Vaishno Devi over
the weekend,’ he says with a laugh. ‘But then, that was Bipin. He
had this rock-solid determination and an ability to convince
people.’
On 8 December 2021, over the course of the day, television
reporters had announced that there was one survivor in the
chopper crash. Col Durga was very hopeful that it would be
Bipin. ‘Bipin had had a brush with death in Uri too, and had
come out of it with his life and spirit intact, he says. He
remembers another stressful afternoon when there had been an
accident and he had desperately hoped that Bipin was well.

IED Explosion in Uri

‘This was again Uri, in 1988, he recounts. ‘As o ciating CO I
had been brie ng a visiting General. Bipin was adjutant and
was coming down from some forward areas in Navakot to Uri
with some documents that needed my signatures. He was also
bringing along some boys, who had to proceed on leave. Around
3 p.m., I received the shocking news that there had been an IED
explosion, and the one-tonne Bipin was driving down in had
been hit, he says.
After informing the visiting General O cer, Col Durga
immediately left for the accident site. He was relieved to nd
Bipin standing by the damaged vehicle, perfectly hale and
hearty, and in complete control of the situation. Two soldiers
had received minor splinter injuries, but everyone else was ne.
‘I was sure he would survive this too,’ Col Durga says.
Unfortunately, this time it was not to be.
 13

‘Zyada Peene Se Sehat Kharab

Hoti Hai’

10 December 2021
Ghum, Darjeeling
West Bengal

S
eventy-year-old retired Subedar Major (Honorary Captain)
Kumar Pradhan was at home. He had just switched on the
television and was watching the news when an
announcement was made that caused his heart to skip a beat.
The newsreader was saying that the helicopter carrying India’s
Chief of Defence Sta , Gen. Bipin Rawat, Mrs Madhulika Rawat
and eleven other defence personnel appeared to have crashed in
Tamil Nadu’s Coonoor region. Pradhan could not believe his
ears.
Kumar Pradhan had been a Naik in the regiment when Bipin
Rawat joined as a young Second Lieutenant. He had been on
leave when the new sahab had joined, but when he came back
he met Rawat Sahab—slim, shy, ramrod straight, with a gentle
smile and crew-cut hair. He would make special e orts to
mingle with the troops, would play troop games with them in
the evening, often eat with them in the langar (the Other Ranks’
kitchen). The men liked him, and he seemed to like them a lot
too.
Kumar Pradhan had been the unit Subedar Major when, a few
years later, Bipin had returned to the unit as the Second-in-
Command (2IC) to then Col Rakesh Sharma, who was
commanding. He was now totally in sync with what the
battalion was doing and deeply concerned about the welfare of
the soldiers. Then he took over the unit: quiet, digni ed,
patient, seldom raising his voice, conveying displeasure only
with the tone of his voice.
But the most prominent memories that kept playing in
Kumar Pradhan’s mind even as announcements about the crash
kept coming in through the day were of Bipin at the barakhanas
that were hosted in the battalion. He was handsome and would
always be smiling, and he would stay back till the last toast was
drunk. Visiting the tented enclosures set up by the troops,
relishing the mutton they had roasted on a coal re, drinking
heartily each time they lled up his glass with Old Monk rum,
cracking jokes with them, dancing the Nepali dance jhamre,
often better than the youngest Gorkha soldiers—sitting on his
haunches and throwing his legs in the air e ortlessly, singing
aloud to the melodies of popular Nepali songs.

•••
1998
Binnaguri, West Bengal
Subedar Major Kumar Pradhan’s brow was marked with worry
lines as he carried the Battle Physical E ciency Test (BPET)
roster to the Commanding O cer’s o ce. He knew that CO
Sahab was not going to like it. The unit was due for an
administrative inspection soon. The Brigade Commander would
be visiting and inspecting everything in the battalion,
including the physical tness of troops. The BPET included a
series of physical tests and a 5 km run with a load to determine
physical standards. While the soldiers had all done very well in
the recently conducted timed run, out of the thirteen Junior
Commissioned O cers serving in the unit, only six had
managed to reach within the stipulated time. The rest had
failed.
When he knocked on the o ce door and walked in, Pradhan
found Bipin Rawat deeply engrossed in a register placed on his
table. He looked up at Pradhan’s Jai Hind, sahab’ and, replying to
his greeting, asked him to sit down. He then looked straight into
Pradhan’s eyes and asked, ‘Pradhan Sahab, ek baat bataiye.
Hamare JCO sahab log kitna peete hain (Tell me one thing. How
much do our JCOs drink)?’ A puzzled Pradhan, who was a
teetotaller himself, assured Bipin that most of them drank just
two pegs each evening, and he could vouch for it, since they
would all sit together in the JCOs mess and have drinks and
dinner.
Bipin pushed the register lying in front of him towards
Pradhan and asked him to take a look. A shocked Pradhan went
through the pages, where it was neatly jotted down how much
each man was drinking. According to those records, most JCOs
were drinking 7-8 pegs of alcohol every day. Bipin then told
Pradhan that he had received the actual drinking details of all
JCOs from the Bar NCO, who had told him that the JCOs were
drinking secretly during the daytime, or even after dinner,
while cleverly hiding this from Subedar Major Pradhan.
‘Ye register le jaiye, aur sahab logon ko bataiye ki itna zyada
peene se sehat kharab hoti hai (Take this register, and tell the
sahabs that drinking too much is injurious to health)’, Bipin said
softly and went back to reading the les placed before him.
Pradhan Sahab picked up the register and excused himself.
Remembering the incident nearly twenty-four years later,
Pradhan Sahab says he was surprised that CO Sahab did not say
a single harsh word to him. He called the JCOs who had been
hiding their drinking and spoke sternly to them while
informing them that the Commanding O cer was aware of
what they were doing. The JCOs were scared of the punishment
that would be meted out to them, but Bipin never mentioned it
to anyone thereafter and went about interacting with the JCOs
as if he knew nothing.
‘It embarrassed them so much that a few stopped drinking
alcohol altogether, while the rest cut down on it drastically’,
says Pradhan. ‘In the next admin inspection, conducted six
months later, the results were good. Physical tness standards
had improved, and all the JCOs nished the BPET well in time’.
Bipin had achieved what he wanted to without saying one
unpleasant word to anyone.
‘Isharon mein baat karta tha Sahab (He used to only hint at
what he wanted)’, Pradhan says with a smile, going a bit further
back to when Bipin was serving as the 2IC to then Col Rakesh
Sharma, who was commanding the unit. ‘Rawat Sahab had
picked up full Colonel’s rank, but he was willing to wait so that
he could take over his own battalion.’
 Pradhan was Subedar Major with Rakesh Sharma, and he
then continued in the same appointment with Bipin when he
took over command of 5/11 in 1998. ‘He commanded the unit
in Binnaguri and then took it to Arunachal, from where I retired
in the year 2000 while he was still serving as Commanding
O cer. CO Sahab ne hi mera vidai kiya tha (CO Sahab gave me
the send-o from the regiment),’ he says and smiles.
Pradhan remembers Bipin as a man who did not speak much
but would think deeply about the welfare of soldiers, and take
well-thought-out and sensible decisions. ‘He would be
concerned about what food the soldiers were getting to eat; if
they were getting their leave in time or not; if they were happy.
He would often visit the langar and sometimes even eat in the
Other Ranks kitchen to keep tabs on the quality of food the
soldiers were getting, he says. And while speaking of food, he
shifts to another memory, this one from Arunachal Pradesh.

•••
1999
Gumba village
Arunachal Pradesh
Col Bipin Rawat, his 2IC, Lt Col Surender Singh Mehta, Subedar
Major Kumar Pradhan and the unit doctor are sitting in the
village headman’s hut. Col Rawat has been visiting all his
company posts on the China border. He has climbed up to the
Dichu post and is now getting acquainted with the gaon bura
(head of the village). The hut is dark and musty, and there is a
strong stench, which the faujis are not used to.
 While the others hesitate to sit down, Bipin makes himself
comfortable on the gaon bura’s bed, smiling warmly at him. The
village headman is very pleased that the Commanding O cer
of the unit is visiting him, and, taking out a bottle of locally
made liquor from under his bed, he o ers it to Bipin, who at
once agrees to have a drink.
‘The room was very dirty. There was a rotten smell inside.
While the rest of us were on the verge of puking, CO Sahab was
happily reaching out to take a glass of madira,’ recollects
Pradhan Sahab.
The village headman o ers the drink to the others, but all
three refuse saying they don’t drink. The gaon bura then calls
out for milk and pours out a glass, o ering it to the others.
‘It looked so unhygienic that we couldn’t even bring ourselves
to hold it, let alone drink it’, says Pradhan Sahab.
So the glass remains untouched. Bipin nishes the drink he
has been o ered, and while the village headman watches him
closely, he reaches out for the glass of milk his men have not
touched and drinks it up as well, thanking the old man warmly
for his hospitality. The four of them then leave.
Once they are on their own, Bipin tells them they should
never refuse any food or drink being o ered by the villagers.
‘Aap aisa karenge toh un logon ko bura lagega. Aisa nahi karna
chahiye (If you do so, they will feel bad. You mustn’t do so)’, he
says.
The next day he goes on scheduled leave.
‘When Sahab came back after twelve days, I found out that he
had su ered a bad bout of jaundice and was still recovering
from it,’ says Pradhan Sahab.
 A concerned Kumar Pradhan receives the CO and asks him
how he contracted jaundice. Bipin quickly tells him, ‘Raaste
mein ganda pani pee liya tha (Had some contaminated water on
the way)’.
A smiling Pradhan tells him, ‘Sahab, ye Gumba ke drinks peene
se toh nahi hua (Are you sure it didn’t happen due to those
drinks you had in Gumba)?’
Bipin just laughs and waves o the accusation.

Crash site 8 December 2021

Emergency services, including the police and re
brigade, and the army, reach the site of the crash and
take over rescue work. Eight ambulances and six
medical teams from Coimbatore’s government and
private hospitals are sent to the site, though larger re
engines are not able to access the route easily since
there has been a tra c jam, which needs to be cleared.
By then, the media has also got wind of the accident.
Shocked Indians watch as news reports declare that the
crashed helicopter was carrying India’s Chief of
Defence Sta , General Bipin Rawat, his wife,
Madhulika, and twelve others. It had crashed about 10
km from the spot where it was meant to land. Two
survivors are initially reported and stated to be in
critical state. Though struck by grief, the country hopes
that Gen. Bipin Rawat is one of them.
Around 1.53 p.m., the Indian Air Force con rms the
crash and the presence of CDS Gen. Bipin Rawat on
board the chopper.
 14

Standing Up for His Battalion

Commander

8 December 2021
Sankey Road,
Bangalore 2 p.m.

I
t has been a long day. Major General Arjun Muthanna,
retired from the army and employed with a private rm in
Bangalore, nally gets a breather from his busy morning
schedule at work and decides to take a break for lunch. He
reaches for his cellphone and is glancing at the WhatsApp
messages ashing on the screen when he is jolted out of his
chain of thoughts.
‘CDS Gen. Bipin Rawat’s helicopter crashes in Tamil Nadu,’
mentions a message on his course mates’ group. Arjun looks at
it in disbelief. ‘VVIP ights have the best aircraft, and best pilots
and crew,’ is his rst thought. ‘This can’t happen.’ He frantically
googles for the news looking for a list of survivors but is unable
to nd any details.
 Placing his cell on the table, Arjun leans back on his chair. His
mind is ashing before his eyes a series of memories. Bipin as a
Gentleman Cadet at the Indian Military Academy—young,
tenacious, his warm brown eyes emanating sincerity. Bipin as a
Rashtriya Ri es Sector Commander in Sopore, getting up at the
Army Commander’s brie ng, passionately standing up for his
men. Bipin, relaxed and smiling, at their meeting in November
2017, when he had unveiled the statues of the iconic Coorgi
soldiers— Field Marshal K.M. Cariappa and Gen. K.S. Thimayya.
Arjun closes his eyes and lets the memories come to him, one by
one.

•••
2007
Sopore, Kashmir
Located in Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir, Sopore
(also known as the apple town of Kashmir) was then a hotbed of
terrorist activity. Brig. Arjun Muthanna and Brig. Bipin Rawat,
who happened to be IMA course mates, were both serving in
Kashmir. ‘He was Commander, 5 Sector, Rashtriya Ri es, and I
was Commander, 10 Sector,
Rashtriya Ri es,” Gen. Muthanna says, remembering the
friend he lost.
Rawat’s area of responsibility included Sopore, which was
also where the Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani,
who passed away recently, lived. Arjun himself was in Pattan,
south of Sopore. ‘A lot of terrorist activity was going on in
Sopore at that time,’ recollects Gen. Muthanna. ‘The local people
were supportive of the terrorist movement. Calls for protest
bandhs [closures] were well subscribed to, partly because of fear
and partly because of the general sentiment, which was in
favour of the militants. Anything happened and Gilani would
be put under house arrest. Bipin used to go and interact with
him a lot and tell us about it later.’
He says he distinctly remembers a conference that took place
in northern Kashmir, which both Bipin and he attended. ‘It was
a normal operational review conducted by the Army
Commander, which was being attended by o cers of the rank
of Brigadier and above. The Northern Army Commander, Corps
Commander and Divisional (Rashtriya Ri es Force) Commander
were present at the conference. Both Bipin and I were Sector
Commanders. Each sector had three-four battalions under it,
depending upon deployment. Bipin and I were responsible for
the battalions that came under us, and we were reporting to the
Kilo Force Commander, Kilo standing for North Kashmir. Since
RR was an anti-insurgency force, our task was to counter
terrorism and make the life of the local people as close to
normal as it was possible under the circumstances, says Gen.
Muthanna.
When the Army Commander stood up to speak, he made a
passing refence to the RR unit under which Sopore fell. He
wanted to know who the Commanding O cer of the unit was
and expressed his dissatisfaction with how things were being
conducted in the area. ‘There was talk that the Sopore unit was
not pulling its weight and that it was not doing all that it could,
or should, be doing to keep terrorist activity at a low,
remembers Gen. Muthanna.
The statement had just been made in passing and did not
really need to be countered, but Bipin immediately stood up. ‘I
remember he surprised us all by getting up and speaking up for
his Commanding O cer. He took the trouble to list out the
peculiarities of the area and how well the unit was performing
under those circumstances. He put across his point very
strongly and explained why he felt that this particular
Commanding O cer was doing an excellent job, to the extent
that nally the Army Commander said, “Okay, I take this point,
and I would like to meet the Commanding O cer.” Which he
did subsequently,’ Gen. Muthanna recounts.
The CO of the Sopore unit was summoned to the next
brie ng and made a detailed presentation on how he was
handling the situation. And nally, the Army Commander went
away satis ed with the e orts being made. Gen. Muthanna says
the reason why he wishes to highlight this point is that he
wants to establish that it was very easy for Bipin to keep quiet
that day, but he did not let anyone cast aspersions on his
o cer’s sincerity. ‘His reaction deserves mention because as a
Brigadier, the Army Commander was three levels higher up for
us. You needed courage of conviction to stand up to him and
make a point that di ered from his.’ He adds that Bipin not only
made sure that the Army Commander heard him out, but he
also put across his point so eloquently and convincingly that
the senior o cer listened and was eventually convinced.
‘It was a great example of a Brigade Commander standing up
for his Battalion Commander. He had the ability to not only
make the other person see his point of view but also be
convinced about it,’ Gen. Muthanna states.

‘He Never Mentioned That

His Father Was a Serving
Brigadier’
Arjun and Bipin were course mates at the Indian Military
Academy. ‘Bipin’s father was a serving Brigadier, but Bipin never
made much of it. He was just another Gentleman Cadet
mucking around with the rest of us. He was seen as a hard-
working cadet, a good team player and someone who would just
put his head down and do what had to be done. ,
Gen. Muthanna says he had a lot of a ection and respect for
his course mate, but he did not agree with a few of the CDs’s
controversial statements. As an example, he quotes the ruling
that o cers would have to stay in service guest-rooms and not
hotels.
In 2018, the army laid down a list of strict dos and don’ts for
its o cers, in a drive to bring down the running costs. This
included orders for o cers to use army guest-rooms and not
hotels when on temporary duty or visits. While interacting
with o cers in Nashik, Gen. Bipin Rawat was quoted as saying
that this would help in curbing corruption. Naming one
particular department of the Ministry of Defence that
comprises army engineers and civilians, he’d said that there
was a possibility that o cers staying in hotels may indulge in
corrupt practices like ‘exchanging briefcases with contractors’,
‘I understand the reasoning behind asking o cers to stay in
service guest-rooms, but to say that this was being done to curb
corruption was not correct,’ Gen. Muthanna says. ‘And making a
comment like that was completely unfounded and painful, as it
literally painted all with the same brush of corruption.’

•••
On 8 December 2021, everyone in Gen. Rawat’s course mates’
group was shocked at the news and was waiting to know if
there were any survivors. But by evening it was clear that all but
one had succumbed. ‘My rst thought was that Bipin had been
in one crash too many—considering his providential escape in
his previous helicopter crash in Dimapur, say Gen. Muthanna.
‘We felt a sense of immense sadness, for the loss of Mrs Rawat
and ‘or their orphaned daughters and the families of the others.
We o ered prayers for the recovery of the sole survivor, Group
Captain Varun Singh and ‘or his family. As military men, we are
exposed to challenges and even face the possibility of death, but
when families are killed the pain is even more intense. Prayers
go out rst for the families and then for the soldiers’ souls,’ he
says.
 15

‘Unrest Was at Its Peak When

He Came to Congo’

11 December 2021
New Delhi

L
t Gen. Jaiveer Singh Negi looked at the massive crowd that
had started gathering around 3 Kamaraj Marg, where the
mortal remains of General and Mrs Rawat were being
kept. Television cameras were panning the area to show their
viewers what a colossal sea of humanity had emerged on Delhi’s
streets to pay respects to the late Chief of Defence Sta .
Gen. and Mrs Negi had driven down from Dehradun to pay
their last respects to the couple they had developed a deep
admiration for over the years. They had been looking forward to
meeting the Rawats in Dehradun, where they were to attend the
Indian Military Academy’s passing out parade. Instead, they
were now in Delhi to attend their funeral.
A day earlier, Jaiveer had been travelling when he received the
shocking news from a colleague that the helicopter taking Gen.
Rawat to Wellington had crashed. By evening, it was announced
that the General and Mrs Rawat had not survived.
The news had taken time to sink in. Some people were
expressing surprise at how deeply even people who had never
met Gen. Rawat were grief-stricken at his shocking demise.
Jaiveer was not surprised at all. He knew how Bipin could
endear himself to people, be it in India or abroad. He had seen
that happening in Congo.

•••
August 2008
North Kivu
The Democratic Republic of Congo
Col Jaiveer Singh Negi was Deputy Commander of the United
Nations’ North Kivu Brigade in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (formerly known as Zaire), when then Brigadier Bipin
Rawat came to Goma, the capital of North Kivu and—
exchanging his Gorkha Ri es hat for a blue UN beret—took over
as Commander of the Indian Army’s largest deployment on
foreign soil.
It was a very demanding time in the world’s most
challenging peacekeeping mission, known by its French
acronym MONUC. ‘Unrest was at its peak, rebel activities were
rising, and there was a lot of apprehension about the
performance of UN and Indian troops, Gen. Jaiveer remembers.
‘The National Army was not being able to control the rebels,
law-and-order problems were increasing, and the local
population was losing con dence in the UN force.’
 Brig. Rawat was surprised to nd that public opinion was
against the Indian contingent, and there were frequent cases of
mobbing and stone-pelting at UN vehicles on the streets of
Goma, where part of the Indian brigade was based. The general
feeling was that they were not doing enough for the local people
and were not welcome in Congo.
‘It was a di cult moment for a new Commander to step in,’
explains Gen. Jaiveer. ‘The challenge before him was not just
planning and execution of operations, and the performance of
his own troops. Since the UN had a combined and multinational
force, he was also responsible for the troops of other countries
that had been placed under the Indian brigade, and elements
like attack helicopters of the army as well as air force. All
operations were a combined exercise and needed teamwork.
Since the UN force was mainly meant to be in a supporting role
to the local government forces, the Indian brigade was also
responsible for training the Congolese Army, called the FARDC
[Forces armées de la république démocratique du Congo], and
for motivating them, because they were the ones who had to
ght the rebels.’
Bipin also had to work on gaining the con dence of the force
headquarters, force commander and the mission head, the
Special Representative of Security General (SRSG), etc., all of
whom had been under pressure due to rising rebel activities.
It was a lot to ask for, but Bipin remained characteristically
unfazed. He took on his new responsibilities with fortitude. He
would sit through endless brie ngs to understand and assess
the situation. He would go around to see the area for himself
and with Jaiveer, sometimes travelling to the force headquarters
in Kinshasha, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the
Congo. He was sharp, a keen listener, and quick to grasp the
situation and understand what needed to be done. Within a
month he decided to turn the soft strategy the UN was
following to a tough one.
‘We have not been using our equipment to the optimum,
despite Chapter Seven of the UN Charter authorizing the use of
force in some scenarios. We have decided to operate with our
full equipment, which includes armoured vehicles and attack
helicopters,’ he told media representatives covering the con ict,
and soon put that into action by ordering the use of attack
helicopters and armoured combat vehicles against rebels,
shocking them completely. The protection of civilians,
domination of areas, taking action against rebels involved in the
recruitment of child soldiers and minimizing displacement of
the population became his priority areas.
His professionalism, and the physical and moral courage he
possessed were quickly passed down to his troops as he took
some bold decisions and got them implemented.
‘There was a fair amount of risk-taking involved’, recollects
Gen. Jaiveer. ‘But he knew his mind well as well as the
capabilities of the Indian troops. While on the ground he was an
astute commander, he could stand up and talk with complete
conviction at meetings in the Force Headquarters and with UN
agencies. He would respond rmly to any adverse comments
about the Indian contingent and India’
Bipin Rawat’s residence in North Kivu was about 15 km away
from where the troops were stationed. Since the prevailing
situation made it di cult for him to travel the distance every
day, he shifted to the troops’ location. Two containers were
modi ed, and he moved into one, spending nearly two months
of con ict right in the midst of where the unrest was, living in a
container adjacent to the one in which Jaiveer was putting up.
 The biggest challenge in Congo was that it was impossible for
the force to be present everywhere, because the area was vast
and armed rebel groups could strike just anywhere or at
multiple places at the same time. It was not possible to patrol
and dominate the entire area at all times. Bipin, however,
remained unfazed. Two major con icts took place, and he
handled both with clarity and levelheadedness.
Gen. Jaiveer remembers how Brig. Rawat would formulate the
plan and set guidelines, but ‘he gave me and the units full
freedom to function there-after’. He cites an instance when
armed groups took over large areas in North Kivu and started
moving towards its capital, Goma.
‘The situation had become critical since the government
machinery and civilian administration collapsed completely, he
says. ‘The mayor came and took shelter in one of our unit bases.’
Assessing the deteriorating situation, and the criticality of
protecting Goma and Masisi, Brig. Rawat decided to use attack
helicopters. ‘That was the rst time we used gunships of our air
force contingent, and were able to halt the advance of the rebels
and push them out from the areas they had taken over, Gen.
Negi explains.
The multinational troops and Indian battalions supported by
BMPs—Russian-made armoured vehicles tted with machine
guns—were also used against the rebels, who could not stand
the former’s might and nally withdrew. The advance of rebel
forces was halted just 10 km short of Goma.
‘If that hadn’t been done, Goma would have fallen’, Gen. Negi
says.
In a remarkable turnaround, the UN force that had been
facing public anger till then became a beacon of hope and
survival for the locals. The fall of Masisi, an important town in
North Kivu province about 80 km from Goma, was prevented
and a lot of civilian casualties avoided. Hundreds of locals,
caught in the cross re between the Congolese forces and rebel
ghters, went to the UN base in Masisi and took asylum. They
clapped and cheered when Indian helicopters strafed rebel
positions with rockets, supporting the state forces as they
fought and pushed the rebels back.
At one point, the rebel groups went and placed themselves in
areas between North Kivu and South Kivu, severing the
connection between the two provinces. While the Indian force
was in North Kivu, it so happened that a Pakistani battalion was
located in South Kivu. Since both countries were working under
the UN umbrella, there was frequent interaction between them.
When armed rebels managed to cut o the two areas, it created
a very serious situation for the UN. The brigade had to launch
an operation to dislodge the rebel groups.
‘Brig. Rawat used to be present for all plans, aerial surveys
and discussions,’ says Gen. Jaiveer.
A massive military operation was planned, and after intense
operations, the UN forces nally removed the wedge and
pushed out the rebel groups between North and South Kivu,
and communication and road contact was re-established.
Gen. Jaiveer remembers how the success of the operation was
appreciated by all concerned. The SRSG, who headed the
mission, came down to Goma, and since Bipin was away, Col.
Jaiveer ew with him on a chopper, over the area from North
Kivu to South Kivu, and explained to him how the operations
were launched and rebels pushed out to restore the situation
and link up the two places. The helicopter nally landed at the
Pakistani battalion post in South Kivu, and the SRSG was
convinced that rebels had been defeated and peace restored.
The success of the operation restored the credibility and
reputation of the Indian troops and the UN in a big way.
Later, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon ew to Kinshasha
from the UN headquarters to hold talks with the Congolese
government and assess the situation. He visited the Indian
brigade in Goma and had a meal with the o cers and soldiers.
Speaking at the gathering, he expressed his admiration for
India. While recounting the bravery of Capt. Gurbachan Singh
Salaria—who had also been with the UN forces in Congo and
attained martyrdom ghting the rebels in 1962—he said that
Congo stood united because of the UN forces and specially
mentioned India’s contribution. A satis ed Brig. Rawat smiled
quietly from where he was listening.
‘It was a great professional achievement,’ says Gen. Jaiveer.
‘The brigade had performed very well. India’s glory was
restored.’ In appreciation of the work done, Brig. Rawat was
awarded the Force Commander’s commendation while citations
were awarded to the Indian units. Level-three military hospitals
were established by India in Goma. Many o cers and troops,
including Col Jaiveer, were awarded the Force Commander’s
commendations.
The brigade continued to perform well thereafter, and as
Brig. Rawat’s one-year term came close to its end, the Force
Commander implored him to stay back. Though he was a
Brigadier, he was addressed as Brigadier General in the UN
assignment. Gen. Jaiveer remembers the request when the Force
Commander came and said, ‘General Bipin, the force has
performed so well under you that we would like you to stay on.
If you don’t mind, we are going to ask for an extended tenure
for you.’
 Brig. Rawat called up the army headquarters the very next
day, reported the conversation and told them that a request
might come from the UN to extend his tenure in Congo, but in
no way should it be construed as coming from him. ‘I am ready
to go on my next assignment, wherever it may be,’ he said. And,
in fact, he did not stay another day after his tenure ended.

Personal Qualities That

Made Him Stand Apart
Gen. Jaiveer talks about Bipin Rawat’s wholehearted
participation in social events and family functions of his
colleagues: ‘Gen. and Mrs Rawat would make it a point to attend
all the functions that they were invited to. remember instances
when, in spite of having just landed at the Delhi airport after a
visit, they would quickly change in some guest-room and
attend the function they had been invited for, even if their busy
schedule allowed them only 15-20 minutes.’
He says they attended his son’s wedding in Delhi Cantonment
in 2018, where Gen Rawat made it a point to inquire where
Jaiveer’s parents were. When he found that Jaiveer’s mother was
wheelchair-bound, he went across to where the elderly couple
were and congratulated them. ‘These were the qualities that set
him apart from other people’, says Gen. Jaiveer.
He also narrates an incident from 2005, when Bipin Rawat
had taken a study leave after the end of his tenure at the
Military Secretary’s branch in Army HQ. About twenty days
before his study leave was to end, he called up Jaiveer, who was
then posted as Colonel MS, responsible for postings and study
leaves of infantry o cers.
 ‘Since by that time Col Bipin had been approved for his next
rank and would have got his posting in a few months, I
expected him to tell me to keep him in Delhi on some
attachment for a few months before his promotion and next
move, to avoid double moves, but he told me to post him out.
“Send me wherever you want to. When my posting comes, I
shall go and join the new place. You don’t have to keep me in
Delhi in the interim period. Since I have served in MS Branch, I
know what problems that can create and don’t want to do it,”
Gen. Jaiveer recollects.
In conclusion, Gen. Jaiveer says, ‘Both Gen. and Mrs Rawat
were simple, down-to-earth people, who touched people’s lives
and hearts. It was obvious in the mass outpouring at their
funeral that people from all walks of life were grief-stricken at
their demise and felt an immense sense of loss.’
 16

A Man in a Hurry

8 December 2021
India International Centre
Delhi 2 p.m.

R
etired Lt General Subrata Saha, former Deputy Chief of
Army Sta , was at the India International Centre when
he noticed a news noti cation on his cellphone. It
mentioned that a helicopter carrying India’s Chief of Defence
Sta had crashed in Tamil Nadu. Shocked, he called up the CDS
but could not get through. Eventually, he rang up a friend at HQ
IDS (Integrated Defence Sta ), only to be told that ‘the news
was not very good’.
Gen. Saha’s heart sank. He had known Bipin from when they
were seventeen-year-olds at the National Defence Academy. It
had been an association of forty-seven years. Gen. Saha looked
back sentimentally on the friendship that had grown as they
had risen in service and as their hair had greyed with time.

•••
‘My intuition was that Bipin was gone,’ says Gen. Saha, speaking
about the day he learnt of the terrible accident. ‘Why so soon? I
asked myself, praying fervently that my gut feeling was wrong.’
The two of them had been together from the fty-third
course at the NDA. Saha had retired as Deputy Chief of Army
Sta in March 2017. Bipin was the Chief at that time. Gen. Saha
says that one of his fondest memories of his very gracious
friend pertains to his own dining-out, where Bipin was the chief
host. The formal dinner was organized at the Battle Honours
Mess on Sardar Patel Marg in New Delhi.
After the meal was over, Bipin stood up to make the farewell
speech and to propose a toast to all the o cers retiring that
month. Standing upright in his Six Bravo—white half shirt
sparkling with epaulettes, black trousers crisply ironed,
regimental kamarbandh wrapped around his waist —he smiled
and looked at Saha, and then told the gathering, ‘I have to
confess that I managed to pass my sta college only because
Saha so generously shared his notes with me.’ And then,
displaying his typical sense of humour, he added, ‘But let me tell
you that Saha did not give me his number-one notes. I know
this because he made it to Camberley in the United Kingdom,
while I could only make it to Wellington.’ ‘The entire lot of
o cers and ladies gathered there broke into laughter, Gen. Saha
fondly remembers.
‘Bipin and I passed out from NDA in December 1977, and
passed out of IMA and got commissioned together on 16
December 1978,’ he says. ‘Bipin had been six months senior to
us in NDA. He had joined inJune 1974 but after his relegation,
he came to our course in January 1975. From there we came to
the Indian Military Academy, which was where he really started
shining and getting noticed.’
 Soon after they were commissioned, the two o cers served
together as Second Lieutenants in 9 Independent Mountain
Brigade at Joshimath, though in di erent sectors. In 1987, they
both got posted to the Indian Military Academy as instructors.
‘We were Captains at that time, and that was the time when we
became really good friends, remembers Gen. Saha. ‘Bipin was a
platoon commander with the Army Cadet College Wing, while I
was a platoon commander in Bhagat Battalion’s Keren
Company.’
He remembers Bipin as a strict though compassionate
platoon commander who cared for his cadets, as if they were his
own children, but was also emphatic that they do well and pick
up the qualities that were important for them to grow in
service. Many years later, the two friends served as Chief and
Deputy Chief of Army Sta together, from where Gen. Saha
retired and Gen. Rawat went on to become Chief of Defence
Sta .
‘It was a coincidence that we kept getting posted to the same
organizations throughout our careers,’ says Gen. Saha. ‘In 2001,
I got posted to Army HQ, Delhi, as Col MS2 [Military Secretary 2,
responsible for career management of infantry o cers]. Exactly
one year later, Bipin came in as Col MS3 [responsible for all NCC
postings and deputations], and we would meet every single day
at the morning conference of the Deputy MS.’
Serving in the MS branch was tough since the postings and
promotions of o cers had to be balanced with individual
expectations and organizational requirements, but Bipin
managed very well. ‘He was pragmatic and compassionate at
the same time. If a case was genuine and the intent good,
Bipin could go to any extent to make sure that the
requirement was met, Gen. Saha remembers.
 As Brigadiers, the two were together again in Kashmir in
2007-8. Bipin commanded 5 Sector Rashtriya Ri e in north
Kashmir, while Saha commanded 268 Infantry Brigade on the
Line of Control, undertaking counter-in ltration operations.
‘We exchanged notes frequently, recalls Gen. Saha, smiling as he
remembers Bipin’s characteristic wit. ‘He would mostly call o
by saying, “Do chaar chhor de—yahaan bhi dhum-dhadaka ho
(Let go of some terrorists— let there be bang-bang here as
well).”

A Soldier’s General
In 2013-14, Bipin was serving as MGGS (Major General, General
Sta ), Operations, at Headquarters, Eastern Command,
Calcutta, while Saha was serving as Additional Director, General
Military Operations, in Delhi.
‘Bipin’s area of responsibility was huge—stretching all the
way from Sikkim to Arunachal and including all areas along the
India-China border and Myanmar, he explains. ‘As ADG MO, it
was my responsibility to speak to the MGGS of Northern and
Eastern Commands every morning to check if all had been okay
in their areas in the past twenty-four hours. So in that period I
spoke to him every day, come rain, hail, sunshine, holidays,
Sundays. Sometimes, we would even do two to three calls in a
day,’ he says with a smile.
He remembers a day in August 2013 when he was in his
o ce. Around 6 p.m., he noticed that one of the television sets
in the room was playing a story about an altercation between
Indian and Chinese troops, which had happened in Yangtse in
the Eastern Sector. He quickly called up Bipin, asking him if he
had seen the news. Bipin hadn’t but said that it had been
conveyed to him by someone.
‘Of course, as it always is in the forces, the rst concern was,
“How did the video leak?” Gen. Saha explains. ‘But we also
noticed how a small group of our soldiers was so boldly
standing up to a much larger number of Chinese soldiers from
the People’s Liberation Army,’
Bipin quickly grasped the point and explained this to his
boss, convincing him that the soldiers deserved a pat on the
back. Soon after, troops who had been a part of that face-o
were awarded commendation cards. The video leak was
investigated as well.
‘That was the kind of man Bipin was,’ says Gen. Saha. ‘He
could quickly grasp and respond to a situation. He could stand
up for his men, and he could remain unfazed under all
circumstances.’
Gen. Saha remembers a call he made to his friend on the
evening Bipin had survived a helicopter crash in Dimapur while
serving as GOC, 3 Corps. ‘Bipin dismissed it with a casual “all
my bones are intact” and laughed heartily’
He can also vividly recall their conversations after the
Myanmar attack, when Bipin was GOC, 3 Corps; after Uri, when
Bipin was Vice Chief; and even after Doklam, when Bipin was
Chief. These were all situations to which Bipin responded
ercely, stating that what had happened was unacceptable.
‘He was absolutely unshaken and very clear in his resolve
that we had to give it back, because if we didn’t, it was bound to
happen again. He was in full control of the situation at all times
and ready to deal with it. He undertook some very good
operations. Bipin was instrumental in the decisions that were
taken,’ Gen. Saha says.
He also points out that Bipin Rawat had the moral courage to
take a stand where it was required and accept blame. ‘He had
the broad shoulders to accept responsibility. He was the kind of
man people would readily accept as a commander, because they
knew that in times of crisis kuchh ho bhi gaya toh peechhe
Commander hain, sambhal lenge (whatever happened,
Commander will handle it)’, says Gen Saha.
Gen. Saha met a Subedar Major a day after the unfortunate
helicopter crash. ‘Sahab, jis din ye hua, hamari unit mein
zyadatar logon ne khana nahi khaya (On the day it happened,
most people in my unit didn’t eat)’, he told Gen Saha, ‘Jitna
Rawat Sahab ne jawano ke liye koshish kiya, bahut kam logon ne
kiya (Few people did as much for the jawans as Rawat Sahab).’
Gen. Saha draws attention to the cadre review Bipin had
introduced for JCOs and Other Ranks in December 2017, exactly
a year after he took over as COAS. The number of vacancies for
JCOs and NCOs increased because of this.
‘Bipin was genuinely concerned about the welfare of troops.
He knew that when more people are promoted the level of
satisfaction increases,’ Gen. Saha explains. ‘The void that the
JCOs and ORs felt was very signi cant. When he became the
rst CDS of the country, people had hopes from him. They
believed in him and his desire to do something for them,

A Man for Modernization

Gen. Saha likes to point out how committed Bipin Rawat was to
indigenization. ‘In 2015, an intensive drive for indigenization,
involving the industry and academia, had been started,’ he says.
‘This was happening under a drive I used to describe as “Win
India’s Wars with Indian Solutions”»
A team comprising Gen. Saha and six Brigadiers organized
army-industry-academia engagements at various academic and
industrial hubs, almost every weekend, from the end of 2015 to
early 2017.
‘The idea was to tell them what we need in the next fteen
years, he explains. ‘Bipin was immensely excited by the
happenings soon after he became the Vice Chief. We signed
MOUs with many IITs. We were able to post army o cers to IIT
Gandhinagar, IIT Mumbai and IIT Madras. In fact, Bipin made
sure that the prime minister was briefed by me on this
initiative at the Army House on the occasion of Army Day on 15
January 2017. Bipin sought modernization, not just in terms of
weapons and technology, but also mindsets, right down to the
troops level. An e ort was made to inculcate technology into
the syllabus at every level. If a soldier was doing a course on
machine guns, an e ort was made to teach him the latest
technology in machine guns. Bipin looked at reforms in totality’

Hide of a Rhino
Gen. Saha says his last memories of his friend are of a man who
had taken on a lot and was trying to do it all in the limited time
he had. ‘I was amember of the National Security Advisory
Board, and once in a month we would sit in his o ce and
exchange views on several things. Many times he would say,
“Look, I am around till 31 December 2022, and I have to achieve
this.” He had embarked on so much, and not all the things he
wanted to do were easy. He knew there were headwinds he
would have to sail through. He did not fear criticism. He did not
hesitate to say something just because somebody might not like
it. He would say and do what he believed in. Not everyone can
do that,’ says Gen. Saha.
Gen. Saha would often joke that though he himself was from
the Assam Regiment, it was Bipin who had the thick hide of a
rhino, and Bipin would laugh heartily at that.
‘He was aware of the kind of expectations people had from
him—tight from the highest leadership to the troops. He was
trying to get things done. He never let any ak interfere with
his decision-making. He was a sincere soldier. His intent was
good, says Gen. Saha.

Bipin’s Legacy
‘His legacy is the national defence reforms. They have not been
concluded yet, but they are halfway home. It is just as well that
this is happening a little deliberately, since any reforms of that
magnitude in the armed forces of the size that we have need to
be brought in with care. The process is on, and it will get done.
The rst integrated command will be the greatest tribute to
General Bipin Rawat, concludes Gen. Saha.
 17

The Reluctant Colonel of the

Regiment

L
t Gen. Rakesh Sharma and Gen. Bipin Rawat, who were
Second Lieutenants in 5/11 GR together, went on to
become best friends. They also had interlinked careers.
‘When I commanded 5/11, Bipin was my 2IC,’ says Gen. Sharma
with a smile. ‘Years later, when he became Vice Chief, I was
serving as the Adjutant General, Indian Army. And he also took
over as Colonel of the Regiment (COR) from me. (The Colonel of
the Regiment is usually the senior-most o cer of the regiment,
who is a father gure to all serving men and looks after their
interests. He represents the regiment at the higher level of
military hierarchy.)
Gen. Sharma seldom talks about the fact that he voluntarily
resigned as COR nearly a year before his retirement because he
wanted Bipin to take over. And that it took him nearly eight
months to convince Bipin to become the Colonel. It is only after
much prodding that he shares that interesting story.
The Reluctant Colonel of
the Regiment
In September 2015, Bipin was commanding 3 Corps in Dimapur
and Rakesh was Adjutant General, Indian Army. It was known
that Bipin would take over as Army Commander on 1 December.
On a Delhi trip, Bipin came over for lunch to Rakesh’s South
Block o ce, as he always did whenever the two friends
happened to be free. After a fond embrace, Rakesh looked at the
old friend smiling at him from across the table and said, ‘Bipin,
you going to become Army Commander. I feel you should now
take over as Colonel of the Regiment.’
Bipin watched him with narrowed eyes. ‘Nahi, sir’ he replied
emphatically. ‘I shall take over only after you retire. Jab tak aap
hain (As long as you are around), you are the Colonel.’
Rakesh had a year and a half to go for retirement. He tried to
reason with Bipin, but the latter absolutely refused to listen.
Lunch over, the two friends parted.
In December, Bipin became Army Commander and was
initially posted as General O cer Commanding, Maharashtra,
Gujarat and Goa Area, for a month—the appointment that his
father had also held many years back, with Rakesh as the senior
Gen. Rawat’s ADC.
‘My wife, daughter and I went to Mumbai to congratulate
Bipin and stayed with the Rawats in Gun House [the GOC’s
residence] in Colaba. It was a nostalgic trip,’ remembers Gen.
Sharma.
That was the second time he broached the subject of COR
with his friend. ‘You have become Army Commander. You
should now take over as Colonel of the Regiment,’ he told Bipin,
highlighting to him that their Regiment (11 GR) was making an
Army Commander after a very long time. (The last Army
Commander had been Gen. Rocky Hira in late 1970s, also in the
Southern Command.)
‘I told him it was a matter of great pride and privilege for the
regiment and that he should take over as Colonel,’ Gen. Sharma
recollects. But Bipin was his usual stubborn self and refused to
entertain the idea.
Rakesh went back to Delhi and discussed his desire with then
Army Chief Gen. Dalbir Suhag, who was also from the Gorkha
Ri es and President of the Gorkha Brigade. A month later, Bipin
took over as Southern Army Commander in Pune. Rakesh, who
happened to go there on an o cial trip, stayed with him and
again broached the subject, which Bipin again refused to listen
to.
‘It took me nearly eight months to convince Bipin and the
Chief, and nally, in April 2016, Bipin agreed to take over as
Colonel of the Regiment,’ he says.
In June 2016, Rakesh went to the COAS and submitted his
resignation as Colonel of the Regiment, and subsequently a
formal ceremony was held at Manekshaw Centre, Delhi, where
Gen. Bipin Rawat took over as Colonel of the Regiment. He gave
a very touching speech, saying that even though he was now
Colonel Commandant, he would still want Gen. Rakesh Sharma
to remain at the helm of a airs. The old-timers from the
regiment still remember the speech very fondly.
That was a time when it couldn’t even be imagined that Bipin
would go on to become Vice Chief or Chief. It was only on 1
September 2016 that he became Vice Chief. Gen. Sharma
continued to serve as Adjutant General.
 On one occasion, the COAS, Gen. Dalbir Suhag, was anked by
Lt Gen. Bipin Rawat, VCOAS, on one side and Lt Gen. Rakesh
Sharma, AG, on the other. That was when Gen. Rakesh quipped
to the Chief saying how lucky he was, anked by two Generals,
both from 5/11 GR.
Gen. Sharma retired from service in March 2017 and was
dined out by Bipin, who had by then become COAS. Giving the
farewell speech, Bipin spoke movingly about the lifelong bond
of friendship the four of them—Bipin, Rakesh, Payal and Madhu
shared.
 18

Not a Man to Take Things

Lying Down

The Myanmar Surgical

Strike
4 June 2015
Chandel district
Manipur 9 a.m.

A
military convoy of 6 Dogra is on its daily road opening
patrol (ROP) about 80 km from Imphal. It is between
Paralong and Charong villages in Chan-del district when
a powerful explosion takes place. One of the trucks is blown up
by a powerful IED. The shocked and wounded soldiers
scampering out of their vehicles are attacked by insurgents
heavily armed with RPGs and automatic guns. Twenty soldiers
are killed and eleven seriously injured in the brutal attack.
Lt Gen. Bipin Rawat is General O cer Commanding (GOC) of
the Dimapur-based 3 Corps. Retaliation from the Indian Army is
almost instantaneous. On
 9 June, Para Commandos cross into Myanmar and attack two
camps of the NSCN-K and the NSCNIM, militant organizations
believed to be responsible for the attack on the Indian Army
convoy. They reportedly kill 15-20 terrorists.

•••
‘The decision to strike back was taken at the highest level. Bipin
devised a plan, collected a team, came to Delhi, got the plan
approved and put it into action,’ remembers Gen. Rakesh
Sharma. ‘He was not a man to take things lying down’
As per the details shared later, a crack team of around seventy
commandos from 21 Para was chosen for the attack. Dhruv
helicopters were used to drop them on the Myanmar border.
Armed with rocket launchers, assault ri es and grenades, and
wearing night vision glasses and uniforms of 12 Bihar, which
happened to be the unit deployed at the border, the commandos
were split into two teams. Each team took on one pre-identi ed
camp. Each of the two teams further divided into two sub-
groups and moved in two circles. While one carried out the
main assault, the second formed an outer ring to prevent
survivors from the camp from escaping.
The commandos entered the thick forest and walked about
ve kilometres to reach the training camps. They wrapped up
the operation in forty minutes, destroying the camps, killing
nearly thirty-eight Naga insurgents and injuring many others.
Rocket launchers were used and gun ghts were carried out in
the operation, which ended with one of the camps being set on
re. Though Mi-17 helicopters were kept ready on the Indian
side, as an emergency measure in case the commandos needed
quick evacuation, the operation went through perfectly. It was
overseen by Gen. Rawat and coordinated by Gen. Dalbir Singh
Suhag, then Chief of Army Sta .
The operation became controversial when the information
minister, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore lauded the operation and
declared that the Indian troops had crossed the Myanmar
border. The Myanmar government denied that the operation
had taken place on its territory. Zaw Htay, director in the
Myanmar President’s o ce, made this statement to the media:
‘We will not allow any foreign military operations in Myanmar
territory.
Every country must respect the other country’s sovereignty.’
Possibly fearing a diplomatic are-up, the Indian government
immediately stopped any more o cial reports after that.
However, two years later, in December 2017, Gen. Rawat
spoke openly about the operation at a book release function in
Pune, admitting that it was a cross-border raid carried out by
the Indian Army on NSCN-K militant hideouts in Myanmar. He
said Special Force commandos had faced many di culties in
Myanmar ‘after crossing over’ but the militant camp on the
other side recorded ‘heavy losses’.
Rawat even told the Pune gathering that he had to alter the
original plan because of a call from National Security Adviser
Ajit Doval, who asked for the commando team leader to be
recalled and briefed before launching the operation. Rawat said
that he was taken aback by this, because the mission had
already been launched. ‘The troops which had reached the
Myanmar border had to later change their route while carrying
out the operation, four days from the day it was initially
planned,’ he said, con rming that the commandos had put on
the uniforms of 12 Bihar, the unit deployed on the border, to
facilitate the attack.
This was the rst time anyone had spoken about the
operations so openly, and there was a furore over his
statements, with many calling it a diplomatic ga e, particularly
his assertion that more such surgical strikes could be
undertaken ‘if required’.
‘Bipin was not a diplomat,’ says Gen. Sharma, analysing the
decisions taken by Gen. Bipin Rawat. ‘He would always state his
point with vehemence, whether the other party liked it or not.
Hiding behind the veil of diplomacy was not his style. He
always spoke his mind.’
As he had done about Myanmar, Bipin spoke his mind about
Balakot too.

•••
18 September 2016
12 Brigade Headquarters Uri
It was a beautiful Sunday morning in Uri, a small town nestled
in the lap of the Pir Panjal range, with the Jhelum River owing
nearby. In the army cantonment that housed the 12 Brigade
Headquarters, there was some activity going on since a
handing-taking-over process between two units was on. While
one unit had completed its two-year tenure and was moving
out, the other was moving in.
Some of the soldiers from the incoming unit were sleeping in
tents put up for them near the administrative block, while
others were re lling 200-litre diesel barrels at the fuel depot
that stocked diesel, petrol and kerosene meant for army vehicles
and for cooking food in high-altitude posts.
The soldiers were completely oblivious to the fact that four
armed dayeen (terrorists on a suicidal mission) had entered
the premises. The four of them had crossed the border and
walked six kilometres to reach the camp. Taking cover behind
the tall grass growing around the campus, they had managed to
reach the administrative block undetected. All four were
heavily armed. Not only were they carrying AK-47 ri es with
grenade launchers clipped under their barrels, they had also
brought more than fty incendiary grenades, especially
designed to set o res. As soon as they spotted the fuel dump,
the militants lobbed as many as seventeen grenades, setting the
dump on re and taking the soldiers there completely by
surprise.
The ammunition dump exploded, and amid the screams of
injured soldiers and the crackle of ames leaping high into the
sky, the militants ran into the nearby barracks. The re spread
quickly to the tents, enveloping all that fell in its path in
massive ames. Thirteen unsuspecting soldiers, still asleep,
were burnt to death almost instantaneously; some succumbed
to their burns later in the hospital.
One of the terrorists was shot down by an alert soldier, while
the others ran deeper into the building. Their original plan had
been to nd their way to the o cers’ mess and blow themselves
up there, but the fumes and smog had disoriented the dayeen.
Taking cover in the second oor of the building, they started
ring. After a six-hour-long gun ght, the three militants were
killed. They were later identi ed as belonging to the militant
out t Jaish-e-Mohammed.
 While unrest in Kashmir had been increasing since 2015,
Uri’s was the biggest terrorist attack on an army camp in
twenty-six years. Eighteen soldiers lost their lives and more
than thirty were wounded. The incident shocked the entire
country, causing a huge public outcry.
On 1 September 2016, Bipin had been brought to Delhi and
made Vice Chief of Army Sta after a short eight-month tenure
as General O cer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C), Southern
Command, in Pune.
‘Uri jolted people out of their seats. There had been sporadic
incidents of violence earlier too, but this time everyone was
badly shaken. Bipin was furious,’ remembers Lt Gen. Rakesh
Sharma, who was serving as Adjutant General of the Indian
Army when Lt Gen. Rawat took over as Vice Chief. The two
friends, who had started their careers together in 5/11 GRas
young o cers, were together once again, this time in two of the
Indian Army’s highest appointments. And both were equally
upset by what had happened.
‘Bipin made his views clear. “We cannot take this quietly. We
have to do something,” he said vociferously, in private as well as
while addressing the parliamentary committee, which was at
that time headed by Maj. Gen. B.C. Khanduri, says Gen. Sharma.
This was a sentiment echoed by the higher-ups as well. A
cross-border retaliatory strike was cleared by Prime Minister
Narendra Modi. Then Defence
Minister Manohar Parrikar, National Security Adviser Ajit
Doval, then Army Chief Gen. Dalbir Singh Suhag and then
Northern Army Commander Lt Gen. D.S. Hooda had a major role
to play in its planning and implementation. ‘Though the
decision was taken at the highest level, Bipin de nitely had a
role to play in it. He was not a man who would take things lying
down. He had always been like that,’ says Gen. Sharma.

‘We Had to Respond’

Just ten days after the Uri attack, India carried out stringent
surgical strikes in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Two teams of
commandos from the elite 2 Para crossed the border and
attacked two terrorism centres, in icting heavy casualties on
the militants. After the strikes, the DGMO made a public
declaration that Pakistan had been informed, and though the
Indian Army would not continue the engagement, it was ready
for any kind of reaction from its neighbour.
After the successful surgical strike, both Bipin and Gen.
Sharma drove down to Parliament House
Annexe together. Gen. Sharma says, ‘The Military Operations
Directorate used to come under the Vice Chief at that time, so
Bipin was directly involved. Both of us had brie ngs, and we sat
outside the conference room together. Bipin was emphatic that
there was no question of not responding. “We could not have
taken this lying down. We had to respond,” he had stated,
rmly and clearly,’

Tenure as Chief of Army

Staff
On 17 December 2016, the Government of India appointed
Bipin Rawat as the twenty-seventh Chief of the Army Sta . The
appointment created a lot of controversy since he had
superseded two senior o cers—Lt Gen. Praveen Bakshi and Lt
Gen. P.M. Hariz. He took over on 31 December 2016, after Gen.
Dalbir Singh Suhag retired. He was the third o cer from the
Gorkhas to become COAS, the rst two being Field Marshal Sam
Manekshaw and the second Gen. D.S. Suhag.

The Balakot Strike

On 14 February 2019, around 3.15 p.m.,a convoy of seventy-
eight vehicles bringing Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)
jawans from Jammu to Srinagar was attacked by a terrorist who
drove an explosiveladen car into one of the buses, leading to the
death of forty CRPF personnel and the perpetrator. The attack
took place on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway at
Lethpora in Pulwama district of JaK. The suicide bomber was
later identi ed as twenty-year-old Adil Ahmed Dar. The
Pakistan-based Islamist militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed took
responsibility for the killings, though Pakistan condemned the
attack and denied any involvement. The entire nation was
stunned by this cold-blooded killing of unarmed troops.
On 26 February, at around 3.30a.m.,in a retaliatory attack,
Indian Air Force planes struck a Jaish-e-Mohammed facility in
Balakot (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). India stated that the mission
had eliminated ‘a large number of terrorists, their handlers and
supporters’, and that the IAF planes had returned home
unharmed. The strikes were described as ‘non-military’ and
‘pre-emptive’ in nature. The Prime Minister, the National
Security Adviser, the chiefs of the three services and heads of
India’s external and internal intelligence agencies (RAW and IB)
were the only people who knew about the entire operation. And
it was declared that it had been a success. Pakistan, however,
announced that the Indian aircraft were intercepted soon after
they entered Pakistan’s airspace and were forced to retreat, after
releasing their bombs in an open area.
 WikiLeaks, quoting a 2004 United States Department of
Defence interrogation report, con rmed that Balakot had ‘a
training camp o ering basic as well as advanced terrorist
training on explosives and artillery’, but Western security
o cials doubted India’s claims and insisted that no large-scale
militant camps existed in Pakistan any more, though this was
the rst time that warplanes had crossed the Line of Control
since the India-Pakistan war of 1971.
Ambiguity remained over the attacks till September that
year, when Gen. Bipin Rawat once again spoke to the media
openly, this time about Balakot. Talking to the press at the
inauguration of a Young
Leaders Training Wing at the O cers Training Academy in
Chennai, he said that the terrorist camp at Balakot, across the
border in Pakistan, which was destroyed by the Indian armed
forces through a surgical strike earlier that year had been
‘reactivated’ and ‘at least 500 persons were waiting to in ltrate
into India’, though ‘adequate measures have been taken to curb
in ltration’.
He emphasized that the Indian Air Force must have destroyed
something if it needed to be reactivated. On being asked if a
repeat of India’s response to Balakot could be expected, Gen.
Rawat said, ‘Why must we expect a repeat of a similar thing?
Earlier we did something, then we did Balakot. Why not keep
the other side guessing? Why tell them what we are going to
do?’
This created a huge outcry in the country, with critics
accusing him of being brash, but he did not retract any of his
statements.
 ‘Bipin was not a diplomat, he was a soldier, says Gen. Sharma,
standing by his comrade stoutly. ‘He spoke his mind, and he
stood by what he did or said. I admire him for it. He never let
criticism faze him, and that was one of his greatest qualities.’
Gen. Sharma recalls something Bipin would often say: ‘Sitting
quietly is not a solution, some deterrence has to be created.’
Gen. Sharma adds, ‘He did what he believed in. Whether a long-
term deterrence has been created or not, only time will tell.’

Bipin Becomes India’s First

CDS
Gen. Bipin Rawat was appointed India’s rst Chief of Defence
Sta on 31 December 2019, having served for three years as the
Chief of Army Sta . He continued to express his views and do
what he believed in, facing a lot of criticism for being brash and
reckless.
Many proposals put forth during his term—like placing
restrictions on CSD purchases, making defence area
thoroughfares, integration of theatre commands—led to a
strong backlash from serving as well as retired o cers. He,
however, remained. characteristically unperturbed by criticism
and was likened to a bull in a china shop by detractors who,
though grudgingly, agreed that this kind of bull-headedness
was often required to push people and get work done.
‘Bipin was a ghter, says Gen. Rakesh Sharma, defending the
decisions Gen. Rawat took. ‘He also had broad shoulders. Not
only could he take bold decisions, he could also accept
responsibility and criticism for those decisions. He would stand
by what he said or did. For me, that made him a man of great
courage and integrity,’
 Bipin Rawat was known for giving the media headlines. But it
is true that some of the boldest decisions taken by the armed
forces happened during his time, and he seemed to have a
signi cant role to play in their implementation. During his
time, there was a marked shift in India’s readiness to defend
itself and, if necessary, to retaliate; its passive engagement
policy on the Line of Control had become a thing of the past.
India had not just carried out surgical strikes across the Line of
Control in retaliation against acts of terrorism but had also
admitted it publicly. Pakistan Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa
later said that Balakot had changed Pakistan’s threat perception
from India. For the rst time, India looked aggressive in
combating crossborder terror sponsored by Pakistan.

In this chapter, the Manipur attack of 4 June 2015 and

its aftermath have been reconstructed from reports
that appeared in The Hindu. Details of the Uri attack
have been taken from an India Today report. Details of
the retaliation to the Uri and Pulwama attacks have
been taken from Economic Times reports. Gen. Bipin
Rawat’s quotes on the Balakot strike are from reports
that appeared in The Hindu.
 19

A General Who Stood by His

Men

G
en. Bipin Rawat remained mired in controversy for his
bold statements and stands taken, for which he received
strong criticism throughout his tenure as COAS and CDS.
Those who knew him well say that he was never diplomatic,
which was due to his strength of character. Knowing brickbats
would be hurled at him, he still stood by what he believed in.
‘As Army Chief my concern is morale of the army. That is my
job. I am far away from the battle eld. I cannot in uence the
situation there. I can only tell the boys that I am with you. I
always tell my people, things will go wrong, but if things have
gone wrong and you did not have mala de intent, I am there,’
he told the Press Trust of India in an interview and proved that
they weren’t empty words.
In 2017, as Chief of Army Sta , he shocked his detractors and
won the hearts of serving men in uniform by publicly standing
by an o cer who had been accused of human rights violation in
Kashmir.
 Major Leetul Gogoi, accused of using a Kashmiri youth as
human shield to protect his men from stone pelting by an
unruly mob, was awarded a Chief of Army Sta Commendation
Card by General Bipin Rawat for ‘sustained e orts’ in
‘counterinsurgency operations’ barely a month after the
incident, which had led to shock and anger in the Kashmir
Valley, a huge outcry from human rights activists and calls for
the o cer to be punished.

The Gogoi Story

On 14 April 2017, a nineteen-second video of a Kashmiri man
in a phiran tied to the front of an army jeep started circulating
on Twitter. An announcement could also be heard on the video.
Someone was using a public address system to say,
‘Patharbaazon ka yeh haal hoga (This is how stone pelters shall
be treated).’ The incident evoked outrage among people in the
Valley, human rights activists and political leaders, and led to a
deepening of the rift between the army and the civil population.
Former chief minister Omar Abdullah, shared the video,
demanding immediate inquiry.
Investigations revealed that the video was taken on 9 April
2017 in Badgam, during the Srinagar Lok Sabha by-election.
The local man was identi ed as Farooq Ahmed Dar, a resident of
Sitaharaan village in Khag tehsil of Budgam, while the army
unit involved was 53 Rashtriya Ri es. Dar told investigators
that he had gone to cast his vote and was on his way to his
sister’s house, where a bereavement had taken place, when he
was caught by the army. The unit’s stand was that he had been
leading the stone pelters
 On 23 May, Major Leetul Gogoi, from 53 Rashtriya Ri es,
faced the media. He took responsibility for the action that was
making newspaper headlines and narrated the entire incident
in detail, explaining what had transpired on 9 April. He said
that around 9.15 a.m., he had received a call from an Indo-
Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) o cial in charge of the polling
stations in Gundi Pora and Ultigan villages in Budgam, who told
him that hundreds of people had surrounded the polling
stations, and were pelting stones at the polling sta and the
ITBP personnel on duty. ‘I took my quick reaction team (QRT)
and reached Gundi Pora in thirty minutes, Gogoi said. ‘We
managed to disperse the mob, and I myself went in with four
men to ensure that those manning the booth were safe.’
At 10.30 a.m., while he was still in Gundi Pora, he received
another distress call from the same ITBP o cer, who said that a
mob of 1200 had collected around the Utligam polling station,
1.5 km away, and was trying to set the polling booth on re by
pelting petrol bombs at it. Gogoi said he reached the spot with
his QRT but could not even step out of his vehicle, because the
crowd, which included women and children, started throwing
stones at them. Despite repeated announcements on the
megaphone, requesting the mob to give way and explaining
that the army was there only to rescue the polling sta , the
crowd continued the stone pelting.
Major Gogoi said that he spotted a short person standing
close by who appeared to be instigating the stone throwers and
asked his men to catch him. Evading the ying stones, he and
his soldiers managed to catch the man who was trying to ee on
his bike. Holding him captive, they then walked to the polling
booth, his presence having stopped the stone pelting. They
rescued four polling sta , seven ITBP personnel and one J&K
Police constable. On the way back, their mine-protected vehicle
got stuck in the mud, which gave the crowd another chance to
start the stone pelting again.
‘They became more violent, and a petrol bomb was also
hurled, which, luckily, did not blast, Maj. Gogoi told the media.
He said when the crowd did not respond to his repeated
requests to allow his men a safe passage so they could leave the
area, the idea of tying up their captive on top of the vehicle
came to him. It immediately stopped the stone pelting. ‘We got
a window to come out safely from that area,’ Gogoi said,
explaining that his move had saved lives of the civilian
population.
‘I did this only to save the local people. Had I red, there
would have been more than twelve casualties. With this idea I
saved many people’s lives,’ he told reporters.
The action was criticized by human rights activists, who
stated that forcing non-combatants to serve as human shields
is a war crime according to the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
Senior retired o cers, like Lt Gen. H.S. Panag, felt that Gogoi
had violated the Indian Army’s ethos, standard operating
procedures and rules of engagement. However, Gen. Rawat
went ahead and awarded the COAS commendation to Maj. Gogoi
for sustained e orts in counterinsurgency operations. He came
in for a lot of criticism but characteristically stood by his
decision.
Giving an interview to the Press Trust of India, Gen. Rawat
said that the main objective of awarding Major Leetul Gogoi was
to boost the morale of young o cers who were operating in the
militancy-infested state. ‘The rules of engagements are there
when the adversary comes face to face and ghts with you. This
is a proxy war, and proxy war is a dirty war. That is where
innovation comes in. You ght a dirty war with innovations,’ he
said, in his characteristically blunt manner.
‘People are throwing stones at us, people are throwing petrol
bombs at us. If my men ask me, ‘What do we do?’ should I say,
just wait and die? I will come with a nice co n with a national
ag, and I will send your bodies home with honour. Is it what I
am supposed to tell them as chief? I have to maintain the
morale of my troops who are operating there’
While emphasizing that maximum restraint was being
exercised in handling the situation in the Valley, he said that if
in a country people lose their fear of the army, then the country
is doomed. ‘We are a friendly army, but when we are called to
restore law and order, people have to be afraid of us,’ he stated,
drawing further criticism.
Gen. Rakesh Sharma says he can understand what went on in
Bipin’s mind. ‘He had done a tenure in Uri and commanded the
Rashtriya Ri es sector in Sopore. He had been in insurgency and
su ered. He understood Maj. Gogoi’s predicament.’
As a Brigade Commander, Rawat had commanded 5 Section
of Rashtriya Ri es in Sopore, which, at that time, was a hotbed
of militancy. He moved to Congo to head the multinational
United Nations Peacekeeping Force thereafter and returned to
Uri as General O cer Commanding (GOC), 19th Infantry
Division after being promoted to the rank of Major General.
‘He had considerable Kashmir experience and knew the
ground reality, says Gen. Sharma. ‘What could Maj. Gogoi have
done? Those people [the polling booth team] would have been
killed if he had not taken this stand. Gogoi was the man on the
spot. He knew what was best in those circumstances. That was
Bipin’s stand, and it made perfect sense, says Gen. Sharma.
 He adds that being Chief of Army Sta , Bipin Rawat could
have easily soft-pedalled the issue and taken a more diplomatic
path, but he did not do that. ‘He chose to stand by his man. That
just shows his character.’

In Trouble, Once Again

On 23 May 2018, barely a year after the human-shield episode,
Major Gogoi landed in the eye of a storm once again. He was
caught posing as an Assamese businessman while checking into
the Grand Mamta hotel in Srinagar with an eighteen-year-old
Kashmiri girl. The hotel sta refused entry to the girl, quoting
rules, which led to an altercation with Major Gogoi and his
driver. Gogoi, his driver and the girl were detained for
questioning at the Khanyar police station. Though the girl
deposed before a magistrate, saying she had willingly gone out
with Major Gogoi, who happened to be her Facebook friend, the
‘national hero’ from just a year earlier was found guilty by the
army of an act ‘in violation of good order and military
discipline’. It included ‘fraternising’ with a local girl and ‘being
away from his place of duty in an operational area’.
Just a few days after Maj. Gogoi was caught, Gen. Rawat
stated that if Maj. Gogoi had done anything wrong, he would be
punished in such a way that it would serve as an example to
others. ‘Agar Major Gogoi ne koi galat karwahi kari hai, toh main
aapko yaqeen ke sath keh sakta hoon, ki jaldi se jaldi usko saza di
jayegi, aur saza aisi doonga main, ki woh ek udharan ban kar reh
jayega,’ he had said.
Major Gogoi was punished. He had to lose six months in
seniority and was moved out of Jammu and Kashmir. ‘When
Maj. Gogoi overstepped his limits and was found guilty of a
transgression, Bipin did not hesitate to punish him. That shows
honesty and character once again, Gen. Sharma emphasizes.
One of the most criticized statements made by Gen. Rawat
was about stone pelters in the Valley. ‘I wish these people,
instead of throwing stones at us, were ring weapons at us.
Then I would have been happy. Then I could do what I wanted
to do,’ he had said.
Gen. Sharma feels Gen. Rawat did not always have these
views. He shares a memory of Bipin when he was Brigade
Commander at Sopore. ‘I was in Udhampur in 2007 and had
own down to Srinagar. Bipin came to pick me up and took me
to Sopore. He was very keen that I should listen to a brie ng by
one of the Commanding O cers. “You must listen to him, sir,”
he said. “He has not reda single shot, but the whole city is
under control. He has achieved it only through relationship
building.” Bipin was emphatic that this was how insurgency
ought to be handled. He was very impressed by the fact that
that young Colonel had managed peace without using force.
When the character of terrorism in the Valley changed with
stone throwing and terror activities going on in parallel, Bipin
voiced his concerns and advocated strong measures,’ he says.

Details of Major Leetul Gogoi’s story have been drawn

from various media reports and an Aaqj Tak interview
with the o cer.
 20

When a Soldier Asked the

Army Chief to Prove His
Identity

November 2017
Vikram Vihar
New Delhi
8 p.m.

O
n a balmy winter evening, the doorbell rings in Brigadier
Shivender’s Vikram Vihar at in Delhi. He and his wife
have retired for the day and are watching television in
their bedroom. They hear the Garhwali bhulla (sahayak) with
them go to open the door, some conversation, and the sound of
people coming in and sitting down. The boy comes in to inform
the couple, ‘Koi sahab aaye hain (Some sahab is here)’, and then
leaves for the day.
Shivender puts on his slippers and walks out wondering who
has come to call on him at that late hour without prior
intimation. He is stunned to nd a widely grinning General
Bipin Rawat sprawling comfortably on his sitting-room sofa,
casually dressed in trousers and a buttoned shirt. Madhulika is
wearing a salwar kameez in her favourite yellow colour and
looking at some pictures on the mantle-piece. She turns when
she hears him coming and starts laughing at the surprised look
on his face.
‘I was shocked to nd Bunny sitting there. He was the Chief of
Army Sta at that time. There was a lot of protocol and security
involved in his movement, and yet he had come to my house
unescorted,’ Brig. Shivender remembers. ‘When I asked him,
“Aap kaise aa gaye (How did you get here)?” he replied, “Tujhse
milne ka mann ho raha tha, isliye gaadi nikaali aur aa gaya (I felt
like meeting you, so I took out the car and came here).” He had
driven down to Vikram Vihar from Army House, his o cial
residence in the Taurus campus, in his Swift Dzire, without
bringing any of his bodyguards or escort vehicles, and he was
looking very pleased about it’
The cousins sit and have a few drinks together, chat about
family and friends, and, after having whatever was cooked in
the house for dinner, Bipin and Madhulika leave. Bidding
Shivender and Renu goodnight, they get in their car and drive
back home.
During the course of the evening, Bipin narrates to Shivender
how, on his way there, he was stopped at the Shankar Vihar
entrance barricade near the United Services Institute by an alert
sentry on duty who politely but rmly asked him who he was. ‘I
told him I was the Army Chief, at which the soldier wasn’t
impressed at all, and asked me to prove my identity, Bipin says,
laughing loudly.
The Army Chief was carrying his ID card, and immediately
took it out and showed it to the young soldier, who inspected it
closely and, once satis ed that the man wanting to drive into
the cantonment was indeed an army o cer, wished him, Jai
Hind, sahab,’ and allowed him in. ‘He even saw my name but did
not register that I was the Chief of Army Sta , Bipin tells his
hosts, a smile playing upon his face. He was quite pleased with
the fact that a soldier was doing his duty so sincerely and
totally unconcerned that he had not recognized his Chief.
‘That was the kind of man he was,’ says Brig. Shivender.
‘Simple and sincere, with absolutely no ego about the
appointment he held.’

A Man of Principles
Gen. Bipin Rawat was a sentimental man, but his commitment
to Olive Green always came before anything else, including his
own family. Brig. Shivender calls his brother ‘a tough husband
but a man of principles’. He remembers an episode from Bipin’s
tenure as 3 Corps Commander, when Madhulika Rawat had to
attend a family wedding in Dehradun, and he couldn’t go with
her. ‘She was travelling alone, and called me up to ask if I would
be able to book a guest-room for her and organize a vehicle that
would pick her up from the railway station since she was taking
the Shatabdi from Delhi to Dehradun,’ Brig. Shivender
remembers.
He authorized a guest-room and told her that it would be no
problem at all. He then contacted the Deputy General O cer
Commanding, 14 Division, Brig. Paritosh Pant. The room was
booked and a vehicle detailed for Madhulika. A few days later,
Shivender received a frantic call from Madhulika asking him to
cancel the arrangements. ‘She told me Bipin had somehow
come to know about a room and vehicle being organized for her
Dehradun trip. Bipin was furious and had told her to get it
cancelled right away. He did not want any favours to be taken
from the army.’ The arrangements had to be cancelled, and
Madhulika eventually stayed with some relatives and took an
autorickshaw from the railway station, even though she was
the Corps Commander’s wife.
Brig. Shivender says Bipin was exactly the same with other
people too. He had no patience with anyone looking for freebies.
‘No one could ask him for any favours because he would curtly
refuse. “Tum businessman ho. Tum fauj mein kyun rehna chahte
ho? Tum bahar jaake ruko (You are a businessman. Why do you
want to stay at an army facility? Stay somewhere else), these
facilities are not for you,” he once scolded a relative who wanted
a room in an army mess,’ Brig. Shivender says with a laugh,
disclosing how people in the family often came to him for
favours, saying they wouldn’t go to Bipin, because ‘wo toh
sunega nahi (he wouldn’t listen)’.
Another unpopular move Gen. Bipin Rawat had made was to
decrease the amount of liquor authorized to army o cers from
the canteen on subsidized rates. An army o cer was authorized
to buy ten bottles of liquor from the canteen at subsidized rates.
In May 2018, a directive from Army Headquarters speci ed that
out of this monthly quota an o cer would now be allowed to
buy only ve bottles of liquor costing more than Rs 1000.
When Shivender brought this up in a casual conversation,
Bipin asked him which o cer could drink ten bottles of single
malt in a month. ‘He would sit there in front of me calculating
on his ngertips,’ says Brig. Shivender. ‘One bottle has twelve
pegs. Taking ten bottles home in a month ka matlab hai tum
chaar peg roz pee rahe ho, iska matlab hai tum ek sharabi ho
(would mean you are having four pegs a day, which further
means you’re an alcoholic),” he would say, adding in disgust,
“Aisa aadmi kaam kya karega (How can such a man do any
work)?” And Shivender would quietly sti e a smile.
‘Bunny was always outspoken, and very clear about what he
liked and what he did not like, he says, remembering yet
another episode from Bipin’s tenure at the Indian Military
Academy. ‘He was a young Major then and would not go to play
golf, because he never liked it and called it a public-relations
exercise. One day, the IMA Commandant asked him, “Why don’t
you play golf, Bipin?” to which the young Major responded, “Sir,
I nd it a waste of time.’»
 21

‘Impress Me with Work, Not

Gifts’

8 December 2021
Mhow

G
en. Manoj Mukund Naravane, PVSM, AVSM, SM, VSM,
Chief of Army Sta , had just nished the Infantry
Commanders’ Conference and was on his way to the
helipad, from where a chopper would be ying him to Indore
and then back to Delhi. The conference had gone well, and he
was leaning back in the seat of the sta car, his mind relaxed,
when he heard his cellphone ringing.
It was his Military Attaché calling. He gave Naravane the
shocking news that the Mi-17 ying Chief of Defence Sta Gen.
Bipin Rawat to Wellington had crashed. Though stunned, Gen.
Naravane was not unduly perturbed. He knew the CDS as a
tough soldier and, since no further information was available,
felt con dent that Gen. Rawat would come out of this
unharmed, just as he had in an earlier helicopter hard-landing
that had happened in Dimapur seven years back.
Meeting Gen. Naravane
25 August 2022
20 Mandir Marg
New Delhi
A Sikh soldier steps forward to open the door of 20 Mandir
Marg, a sprawling, tree-shaded bungalow in Delhi Cantonment,
the present residence of General Manoj Mukund Naravane,
twenty-eighth Chief of the Army Sta . The General, who retired
on 30 April 2022, walks into the room in aw hite shirt and
trousers. He is slim, stands ramrod straight and has sharp
intelligent eyes that light up with a smile of recognition.
He speaks of the late Gen. Bipin Rawat with a lot of respect
and a ection, though he admits that they did have a di erence
of opinion sometimes. ‘That is bound to happen with anyone
that you work closely with, he says candidly. And the fact is that
the two Generals were together for nearly nine years, ever since
2013, when Gen. Rawat got posted in Calcutta as Major General
General Sta (MGGS), Eastern Command, while then Maj. Gen.
Naravane was serving as Inspector General of Assam Ri es
(IGAR), at Kohima in Nagaland.
Thereafter, the two served together when Gen. Rawat was
posted as Corps Commander, 3 Corps, headquartered in
Dimapur; then when General Rawat became the Vice Chief and
Gen. Naravane took over as GOC Delhi Area; then again as Chief
and Vice Chief; and eventually when Gen. Naravane took over as
Chief of Army Sta from Gen. Rawat, who was appointed as
India’s rst Chief of Defence Sta .
‘I came in touch with Gen. Rawat quite late in life. It is
surprising that despite serving the same organization, we had
never met, says Gen. Naravane. ‘Both of us had been serving in
di erent parts of the country till then.’
Gen. Rawat’s posting to the east in 2013 had come as a
surprise to a lot of people, since he had spent most of his time in
Jammu and Kashmir. He had commanded his brigade and his
division there. So when he got posted as the MGGS to Eastern
Command, there were raised eyebrows and possibly also an
apprehension as to how he would handle unfamiliar territory.
All that was laid to rest soon enough.
‘I remember seeing him for the rst time at Dimapur in 2013,
where the 3 Corps war game was going on,’ says Gen. Naravane.
‘He was attending as the MGGS designate. He had reported at
Calcutta, though not yet taken over. There was no need for him
to come for the war game, but he had come, which showed that
he was willing to make an extra e ort to familiarize himself
with the demands of the new appointment.’
Gen. Naravane says that Gen. Rawat did not make an
impression on him during that rst meeting for two reasons.
The rst being that Gen. Rawat had just sat quietly through the
entire exercise without any participation. And the second, Gen.
Naravane remembers with a laugh, was this: Gen. Naravane was
playing the enemy commander in the war game, the head of
Yellow Land, and was naturally on his toes throughout, without
any time to take impressions, especially since Gen. S.L.
Narasimhan, then Corps Commander, and Gen. Dalbir Singh
Suhag, then Army Commander, who later on went on to become
Chief of Army Sta , were also attending.
‘Despite being at such a senior position, Gen. Rawat just sat
there quietly, observing and imbibing information. Since he
had come to the east after along time, he was obviously using
the opportunity to relearn things and refamiliarize himself
with the North-east,’ recollects Gen. Naravane.
A few months later, the command war game took place in
Calcutta, and Gen. Naravane was once again the ‘enemy’, with
the four corps in the Eastern Command—3 Corps, 4 Corps, 33
Corps and 17 Corps—functioning as own troops. By then, Gen.
Rawat was rmly in the chair. As MGGS, he was the lynchpin
around whom the whole war game revolved. He had to see what
the own forces (Blue Land) were doing, what the enemy forces
(Yellow Land) were doing, match the whole thing and then
decide the outcome.
This time he made a huge impression on everyone. ‘Gen.
Rawat was everywhere, without taking any breaks even for
Saturday or Sunday,’ remembers Gen. Naravane. ‘He knew the
whole Command by then, which was remarkable, since it was a
big command including a vast area, starting from
Sikkim to the west, going up to Kibithu in the east, with
Bhutan in the middle’

The Only Gift

Since Gen. Naravane was IG Assam Ri es for close to twenty-
two months, he got to work with Gen. Rawat even when he was
moved to Dimapur as Commander, 3 Corps. ‘As luck would have
it, I was still there, and that was the time he became my boss,
and I worked closely with him for nearly eight months,’ he says.
So Naravane saw him as MGGS and then as Corps Commander.
And from then on, the two were together almost all the time.
Naravane fondly remembers one particular dinner he hosted
for Rawat in Kohima at end of 2014. ‘Gen. Rawat had come on a
visit, and we had a party for him in the mess that evening,
where I pinned a small Naga spear lapel badge on his jacket.’
That badge, he says, is the only gift he ever gave Gen. Rawat in
all the years that they served together. And that was what Gen.
Rawat appreciated the most. ‘He did not believe in ostentatious
gifts, and neither did I, so that became a connect between us,
says Gen. Naravane.
Gen. Rawat always advocated the view that material things
didn’t matter. ‘If you want to impress me, impress me with
work, he would often say.
Naravane adds: ‘I also remember him telling me once how
someone had sent him a huge hamper for his birthday and how
he had couriered it back to the concerned o cer, at his own
expense. He was really against the gifting culture,’

Taking the Road Less

Travelled
Naravane recollects an incident in Nagaland when Rawat had
come to Kohima and, on his way back, insisted on driving from
Mokokchung to Tuensang, to see for himself the road that
soldiers had to use. He had a helicopter, but he insisted on going
by road, despite Naravane’s e orts to make him reconsider. ‘The
roads in Nagaland are very bad. The road to Kohima is terrible,
and Mokokchung to Tuensang was so bad that it took four
painful hours to traverse the eighty-three-kilometre stretch.
Since I had been visiting all my areas by road, I was aware of
the road’s condition and tried my best to dissuade him by
saying, “Sir, kyun road se ja rahe ho? Chopper se chalte hain (Why
are you going by road? Let’s take the chopper).” But Gen. Rawat
was insistent. He did not listen to me,’ states Gen. Naravane.
 ‘Unless I see it for myself, I will not come to know the
situation on ground,’ Gen. Rawat told him. ‘Ek baar toh main
road se jaunga hi jaunga (I will de nitely go by road at least
once).’
And so the two generals did not ask for a chopper and took a
Gypsy instead. It was four hours of backbreaking travel that
both took in their stride. The road was in a terrible condition
and riddled with deep potholes. Gen. Rawat was so appalled
that midway he asked the driver, ‘Gypsy ko iss khadde mein khadi
karo, main ek photo lena chahta hun (Stop the Gypsy in this
pothole, I want to take a photo).
The vehicle was parked in the pothole that, Gen. Naravane
says, was so deep that almost the entire Gypsy went into it. Gen.
Rawat then took a photograph, which he said he would send to
the chief minister of Nagaland, to show him the state of his
roads. ‘I am quite sure he would have done it too,’ says Gen.
Naravane. ‘He was not a man to take things lying down!’

A Man of Action
That Bipin was not a man to take things lying down became
obvious soon after. On 27 March 2015, when he was
Commander, 3 Corps, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland
(NSCN [K])—a Naga nationalist separatist group—abrogated its
fourteen-year cease re with the Indian government. Two
shocking ambushes took place in Nagaland. In the rst one, a 23
Assam Ri es water bowser, going to a village stream to fetch
water, was ambushed and fell victim to an IED—the attack led
to the death of six people. In the second, an army convoy was
ambushed in Chandel district, leading to the brutal killing of
eighteen soldiers.
 Naravane had left on posting when these happened but he
says that in his nal months in Nagaland, he had a gut feeling
that the cease re was going to break. ‘The signs were already
there,’ he says. ‘A senior insurgent leader’s son, who used to
study in Sainik School, Punglwa, in the outskirts of Dimapur,
did not rejoin school after the winter break, which implied that
the insurgent leader was possibly moving his wife and children
out of harm’s way.
It was also observed that the strength in certain militant
camps, which the Assam Ri es used to keep under watch, was
going down. ‘The numbers had gone down from 100 to
nineteen, which meant that the militant group had slowly
started moving its cadres out, Naravane explains. Militant
camps were out of bounds for the forces while a cease re was in
e ect, but once the militants broke the cease re Assam Ri es
could immediately launch an attack on the camps. A depleting
strength in militant camps implied that the insurgents were
slowly moving their cadres out of harm’s way since they
planned to break the cease re. ‘All the pieces of the jigsaw were
there, says Gen. Naravane. ‘Unfortunately, ambushes are very
di cult to predict or prevent.’
Naravane was in Delhi when the attacks took place, but he
says he has no doubts that Gen. Rawat would have strongly
advocated striking back. ‘He would not have taken it lying
down. He would have de nitely insisted on strong action,’
Naravane says.
And soon the Indian Army’s retaliatory surgical strikes took
place, where in a daring operation Indian para commandos
crossed the border and struck militant camps in Myanmar
getting the moral ascendency back.
 •••

‘He Was Easy to Work With’

‘Gen. Rawat was an easy man to work as well as converse with,’
says Gen. Naravane, remembering his tenure as GOC when
Bipin was his Corps Commander. ‘There are Corps Commanders
who want to micromanage everything, and I have seen people
like that when I was COAS. But he never did that. He was not the
kind to breathe down the necks of his GOCs, the divisional
commanders. He understood it well that he should not be too
hands-on and allow them to function in their own way. He let
us do what we wanted to, without interference.’
The other quality that Naravane says he really appreciated in
Rawat was his un appable temperament. ‘If there was an
accident— for instance, if a vehicles had gone down the khud,
or someone had died—we would have to give that report to the
Corps Commander at the end of the day. There was never any
overreaction from him. He would just take it in his stride. He
would not say, “Sack the CO.” He understood that when people
are working every day and hundreds of vehicles are plying on
the roads, one odd accident might happen. Making a mistake is
a sign that people are working. If you sit inside your post and do
nothing, you will naturally stay safe since nothing will happen.’
The same was visible to all when Gen. Rawat was onboard a
helicopter that crashed in Dimapur. ‘I was in Kohima. We heard
that a hard landing had taken place, recollects Gen. Naravane.
‘He did not show any signs of fear or anger after the crash, and
reassured the pilot, asking him not to worry, since accidents
happen.’
 After Dimapur, Gen. Bipin Rawat went to Pune as Army
Commander, Southern Command, for about eight months, after
which he returned to Delhi as Vice Chief of the Indian Army.
‘I also had a short break in Delhi before I went to Command 2
Corps,’ says Gen. Naravane. And then he was called back to Delhi
as GOC, Delhi Area. ‘I am sure he had a role to play in getting me
to Delhi Area, but he never told me, and I also never asked him,’
Gen. Naravane says.
After being promoted to Army Commander Grade, Gen.
Naravane served as General O cer Commanding-in-Chief,
Army Training Command, from December 2017 to September
2018. Thereafter, he served as General O cer Commanding-
inChief, Eastern Command, from October 2018 to August 2019.
‘He got me to Delhi Area rst,’ says Gen. Nara-vane. ‘Then he
sent me to Army Training Command (ARTRAC), in Shimla.
After this he sent me to Eastern Command, and for his last four
months in o ce as Chief, he got me as Vice Chief’
Gen. Naravane says he had the honour to dine with Gen.
Rawat as outgoing COAS, and in his speech as incoming COAS,
Gen. Naravane gave his predecessor the last farewell in the
Battle Honours Mess, in which he candidly stated that Gen.
Rawat had been grooming him for the COAS job without telling
him anything. Gen. Rawat just smiled at him from where he
was sitting.
‘He never said anything to me, and I never asked him
anything,’ Gen. Naravane states sincerely. ‘But he made sure I
saw more and more of the army in those years.’
Through the ARTRAC, Gen. Naravane says, he got the
opportunity to see all the training establishments of the Indian
Army, like the High Altitude Warfare School in Gulmarg, the
O cers Training Academy in Chennai, the Electrical and
Mechanical Engineering School in Baroda and the
CounterInsurgency and Jungle Warfare School (CIJWS) in
Vairengte.
All this exposure helped him a lot, in terms of understanding
the training requirements of the army. And, of course, his year
as Army Commander was invaluable too. In his four months as
Vice Chief, he says, he came to know the working of the
Ministry of Defence and the bureaucracy. ‘All the brie ngs I
would have to take as Chief I got those as Vice Chief, so it was
hands-on experience that prepared me for the task he was
planning to give me, without giving a single hint’

A Warm, Affectionate
Person
Gen. Naravane remembers Gen. Rawat as a warm and
a ectionate person. Rawat would make it a point to attend
every wedding or raising day that anyone personally came to
invite him for, and that was among his endearing qualities. ‘He
used to say that if somebody has come to my o ce and waited
outside for half an hour to give mea card, then I have got to go
for that wedding,’ Gen. Naravane says.
Naravane recollects with a smile that he and Gen. Rawat,
along with their wives, sometimes attended as many as three
weddings in an evening during the wedding season in Delhi.
Sometimes, two weddings and one raising day. ‘He used to say,
“We will have snacks at the rst, dinner at the second and
sweets at the third.” And all four of us would be party-hopping
till late evening.’
Professional
Disagreements
‘When you work with someone, you are bound to have some
professional disagreements,’ says Gen. Naravane. ‘You are
dealing with so many issues as Chief and Vice Chief, or even as
CDS and Chief, you tend to have di erences of opinion
sometimes. He might not have agreed with something in the
rst instance, but if you persisted and persevered, he would
realize that the issue was important for you and you felt
strongly about it. Then he would be willing to listen,’

Modernizing the Army

One major contribution of Gen. Rawat, which was followed up
by Gen. Naravane and which he hopes will shortly be put in
place, is the concept of Integrated Battle Groups (IBG).
The IBG is aimed at shortening the decision-making loop in
the Indian Army by reducing the links in between. The idea
works on the belief that when the brigade and the division are
merged, one link is removed in the chain of decision-making,
and the loop becomes shorter, increasing e ciency. It was also
felt that multiple headquarters had a role to play in the old
times, when communication was poor and radio sets had a
limited range. ‘Now, sitting in Delhi, I can see what is happening
in Sikkim. So we do not need so many links in the chain,’
explains Gen. Naravane.
‘Gen Rawat championed the cause in a big way, and I was
very much in favour of it, he says, recounting how, as GOC
ARTRAC, he had himself made an independent presentation to
the Army Commanders about having lighter divisions by
merging the brigades and divisions.
‘My idea was to have strong battalions, alight division and a
corps,’ he says. ‘But when I presented it to the Army
Commanders in 2018, it did not nd much favour. Incidentally,
Gen. Rawat too had independently landed on the same idea.
‘Our ideas converged. He started the project, gave it the
nomenclature IBG, and I could follow it up. It is now a work-in-
progress and is aimed at making us operationally more
e cient.’
There is a discreet tap on the door of the study. It is Gen.
Naravane’s helper, politely reminding him that he has another
appointment scheduled and his car is waiting. Excusing
himself, the General gets up. ‘I had a very good innings with
Gen. Rawat but the end was very tragic,’ he says, in the memory
of the man who was instrumental in making him reach where
he did. ‘You would not wish an end like that for anyone.’ And,
with a nal handshake, he is out of the door.
 22

‘He Was Garhwal’s Hope for a

Better Future’

8 December
Arun Vihar
Noida

C
ol Satpal Parmar was visiting his bank at the Ganga
Shopping Complex when his cellphone started ringing.
He ignored it, since he was busy withdrawing cash, but
the calls kept coming. Exasperated, he reached out for his cell to
check who was trying to contact him so desperately. It showed
multiple missed calls from his brother-in-law Deepak Chauhan,
who lived in Bangalore.
Col Parmar walked back to his car, and once he was
comfortably seated inside, he called back. He was shocked to
learn that his nephew Bipin Rawat’s helicopter had crashed.
‘Bhaisahab, aap ghar jaiye aur TV lagaiye (Go home and switch
on the TV)’, Deepak said.
Col Satpal drove back as if in a trance, and entered his at to
nd his wife and children sitting shell-shocked in front of the
television set. The news channels were constantly ashing
pictures and videos of Gen. Bipin Rawat, resplendent in his
uniform, proud and upright, looking straight into the camera.
Col Satpal could not believe the horri c news. He had met Bipin
and Madhu for lunch just two days back. Telling his wife to pack
a suitcase since they might have to y to Wellington, he decided
to drive down to Defence House, the o cial CDS residence on
Kamraj Road.
On his way he kept trying Madhu’s cell frantically, but it
would not connect. Just as they crossed the Nizamuddin Bridge,
he got a call from Lt Col Arati, sta o cer to Madhulika. ‘Sir,
jaldi aaiye (come quickly), we have not broken the news of the
crash to Tarini’, she said. By then it had become clear that
Madhulika was no more, but Bipin was believed to be alive
though critical.
Around 2.15 p.m., when the Parmars got close to the CDS
residence, Kamraj Road had been turned into a fortress. There
were police barricades everywhere. Col Satpal saw Defence
Minister Rajnath Singh’s car entering the premises. ‘At that
moment,
I just knew we had lost Bipin,’ he says. ‘Why else would the
Defence Minister be at his house.’
As he waited in his car, to be allowed entry into the house, Col
Satpal’s mind was swamped by memories of his beloved
nephew. He had been in class six when his sister Sushila had got
six-month-old Bipin to the village. Everyone had fallen in love
with the fat gurgling baby with pink cheeks who would keep
smiling all the time. Bipin had been in school when collegiate
Satpal went to stay with his sister in Dehradun and would make
the gentle and obedient Bipin sit next to him and study till late
into the night. ‘Mamaji, bahut neend aa rahi hai. So jaayen?’
Bipin would ask softly, when he could no longer keep his eyes
opem. And then a memory from just two years back ashed
before his eyes. Bipin, now more friend than nephew, had called
him up laughing and declared in his characteristic boisterous
manner, ‘Mama, chaar din baad gaon ja raha hun. Kisi ko pata
nahi chalna chahiye (Mama, I am going to the village four days
later. No one should know)’. Ignoring his wish completely,
Satpal had immediately called up his other nephew who lived in
Thati (their village) and told him, ‘Beta Narender, Bipin gaon aa
raha hai. Sara intezaam kar ke rakhna (Narender, Bipin is coming
to the village. Make all the preparations)’.

•••
20 September 2019
Thati village
Dhanari block
Uttarkashi
The air rings out with the sounds of the dhol and damau, the
drums played in the hills of Garhwal on all festive occasions.
Loud cheers of Jai Hind’ and ‘Bipin Rawat ki jai’ reverberate in
the cold mountain air as the slim sticks in the hands of the two
drummers meet the hide of the percussion instruments.
Villagers line up with marigold garlands to receive the man of
medium height and stocky build who stands in their midst,
smiling widely. He is in uniform, wears a green beret and has
collar dogs, from which four sparkling stars glint in the sun.
Chief of Army Sta Gen. Bipin Rawat is visiting his maternal
grandfather the late Thakur Surat Singh Parmar’s village in
Uttarkashi. The General’s wife stands by his side, accepting the
warm greetings of the villagers. Bipin has own in from Harsil
and then driven 30 km from the ITBP helipad at Matli, where
his chopper landed at 9.30 a.m. Over fty-three years back,
when he was brought to the village as a baby in his mother’s lap,
his parents had to cover the distance on horseback and in the
dandi, the Pahadi version of a palanquin—a big wooden chair
tied carried by four men.
Spread over 31 hectares and with 150 households, Thati is
one of the main villages of the Dhanari block, which gets its
name from its rich yield of dhan (wheat). Dhanari is a cluster of
forty-six villages, all of which used to come under Thakur Surat
Singh, Bipin’s grandfather, at that time. In the British period,
Singh, a rich and well-respected man, was in charge of revenue
collection for the entire block.
Located 32 km from Uttarkashi and nearly 150 km from
Dehradun, Thati is based on the intersection of two rivers,
Dhanpati and Kalgari, and is known for its Rajrajeshwari
temple, which is the rst place that Bipin visits. Paying his
respects to the local deity, he walks down to his cousin
Narender Parmar’s house. Narender is Bipin’s rst cousin, the
son of his mother’s younger brother, Khushpal.
There, he is a ectionately fed the traditional daal ke pakode, a
Garhwali delicacy, and given a priceless gift—an old photograph
of him as a baby with his mother and his grandparents that was
taken in Dhanari when he was brought there as a baby.
People want to touch him, make videos, take pictures with
him, shake his hand, and he obliges them all. He is the son of
the village, having visited it twice before—once as Second
Lieutenant, when he had dragged his friend Rakesh Sharma
along to show him his maternal village (the two of them were
posted as Second Lieutenants in 5/11 GR in Harsil); and the rst
time as a six-month-old baby.
Col Satpal Parmar is the younger brother of Bipin’s mother,
Sushila. He is the mama who saw Bipin grow up in front of his
eyes and proudly stayed by his side as he grew in age and rank,
reaching one milestone after another.
Col Parmar looks at the family photograph that hangs in his
Noida at and fondly remembers the rst time Bipin was
brought to Thati as a baby. ‘My sister Sushila visited the village
after her elder son was born. There was no road in those times,
and much of the journey had to be done on foot or on
horseback,’ he reminisces.

Bipin’s First Visit to Dhanari

September 1958
When Bipin was six months old, his mother, Sushila, decided
she wanted to take him to the village to meet her parents. Capt.
Laxman Singh Rawat, who was posted in Dehradun, agreed to
his wife’s wishes, and the couple travelled to Dhanari with their
rstborn, a happy gurgling Bunny, who would mostly be asleep
in his mother’s arms.
The young couple boarded a small Garhwal Motors bus from
Dehradun that took them via Rishikesh, Narendra Nagar,
Chamba and Tehri, to nally reach Dharasu, the last motorable
point 30 km from the village. Thakur Surat Singh had sent up
his horses and a dandi for his daughter and sonin-law. Many
villagers also went up to the roadhead to receive Bade Thakur
Sahab’s grandson. The couple were received with respectful
greetings of Jai Deo Maharaj and Dei Sahiba, o ered hot tea and
snacks, and then the procession made its way back to Thati,
singing and chattering in excitement.
‘It took them almost six hours to cover those thirty
kilometres on foot,’ remembers Col Parmar. ‘I was also in the
village at that time, studying in class sixth, in the government
school that had been constructed by my chachaji, Thakur
Krishna Singh, who had been Education Minister, and on land
donated by his older brother, my father, Thakur Surat Singh. It
catered to the educational needs of all the children in the
nearby villages.’
Col Satpal has a smile on his face when he recollects the
excitement that Bipin’s arrival created. ‘Bade Thakur Sahabak
naati ayun cha (Bade Thakur Sahab’s grandson is here).’ It made
big news in the village. Children from nearby villages would
come over to see him, and he was a delightful baby, with his
pink chubby cheeks, sparkling eyes and a playful smile. He was
handed over from one set of arms to another, and people
instantly fell in love with him. ‘Even the servants would ght
for a turn to hold the baby’
He says he clearly remembers the day the young Captain
decided to depart, taking his pretty wife and son along. ‘What a
sight it was. Capt. Laxman Singh was on his horse, looking t
and handsome. Sushila Didi and Bipin were in a dandi. It was
being carried by four men from the village, two in front and two
behind. They were holding the wooden chair up in the air. All of
us stood around waving goodbye. Many of the villagers
accompanied the travellers to the road-head, from where the
young couple caught a bus back to Dehradun.’
For an emotional Sushila, who had left the village to study in
Dehradun when she was six years old, the ride was reminiscent
of the caravans the family would move in, back when there was
no motorable road to Dhanari. Horses, dandis, servants and
cooks would travel together all the way to and from Dehradun,
making two halts in between— one at a place called Bhaneti and
another at a place near Mussorie hills. Finally, on day three, the
entire family would reach Dehradun, travel-weary but excited.

‘Itna Soft Hai, Fauj Ka

Ragda Kaise Lega?’
Col Satpal also remembers one of Bipin’s early birthdays that
was celebrated in Dehradun. ‘It must have been his second or
third birthday. I had been sent to Dehradun for my higher
education and was studying in a Christian missionaries-run
school in Paltan Bazaar. I had gone to attend the party, andI
remember eating a lot and having a very good time, with Bipin
as a toddler waddling around the house, still learning to walk
properly.’
Bipin, he says, was a sweet and obedient child, the perfect role
model for his younger siblings: Kiran, who was quite docile too,
and Vijay, who was notoriously naughty right from childhood.
Col Satpal shares memories of staying with his sister in their
civil accommodation in Bindaal near Doon School, when Bipin
and Vijay were in school and Satpal himself was in college.
‘Since their father was not with them, I was told by the family
to go and live with Sushila Didi. So I left our 14 New Road house
and stayed with them for about seven months, till Didi moved
with Jijaji and the children were put in boarding school,’ he says.
During this period, he would often make Bipin sit up with
him and study at night. ‘When he was tired he would hesitantly
ask me, “Mamaji, neend aa rahi hai, ab so jaayen (I am sleepy.
Should we go to sleep)?” When I had visited them in Shimla, we
would go for long walks, and Bipin was such a soft child that
soon his cheeks would ush pink and he would say, “Mamaji
bahut thak gaye, chalo ghar wapis chalte hain (I am tired. Let’s go
back home).” We would turn back and head home,’ Col Satpal
recounts, a smile playing upon his lips.

•••
Col Satpal remembers the time when he went on a holiday to
Dalhousie, where then Brig. Rawat was posted as Brigade
Commander, 323 Mountain Brigade. ‘I had taken a train that
dropped me o at Pathankot. From there I had to travel by road
to Dal-housie. Suddenly, I looked up to nd Bipin standing in
front of me with a shy smile on his face. He was in eleventh
standard at that time and had been sent to receive me at the
railway station. “Mamaji, main NDA ja raha hun (I am joining
the NDA),” he told me.
Hearing this, Col Satpal was more worried than happy. ‘I
thought he was such a delicate child. How would he survive the
tough army training? Mujhe chinta thi ye fauj ka ragda kaise
lega.”’ He expressed the same doubt to his sister, who just
smiled and said she was sure Bipin would be able to do it. And,
as everyone would soon nd out, she knew her son well. He was
way tougher than people thought.
On 16 December 1978, Gentleman Cadet Bipin Rawat passed
out of the Indian Military Academy, watched over by his proud
parents, Gen. and Mrs Laxman Singh Rawat. Then Captain
Satpal had come from Kashmir, where he was posted, to attend
his nephew’s passing out parade. ‘Bipin was the recipient of the
Sword of Honour. It was a proud day for the family. I was
amazed to see his transformation, from a frail kid to this t and
handsome young o cer. He had changed completely. The
chubby cheeks were gone, his face had become well chiselled, he
had become so much taller. He looked strong and con dent,’
says Col Satpal, a nostalgic look in his eyes.
Lt Gen. Gajendra Singh Rawat was the Commandant of the
Indian Military Academy when Bipin Rawat graduated. ‘Though
the surname was the same, he was not a relative,’ says Col
Satpal, alluding to gossip that had been doing the rounds in
social media, hinting that the Sword of Honour came to Bipin
because he was related to the then IMA Commandant. ‘Many
years later, our cousin Beena Didi’s daughter Archana was
married to Gen. G.S. Rawat’s son Jitender, but back in 1978 no
one knew that was going to happen. There was absolutely no
relation at that time. Fact is that Bipin did very well in the
academy. The Sword of Honour is not given on the IMA
Commandant’s whim and fancy. It has to be earned by a GC,
who is observed during the entire period of training. No way
can it be manipulated,’ he says.
Col Satpal says malicious gossip about Bipin started doing the
rounds after he became Chief of Army Sta . ‘He was a tough
chief, who took some harsh decisions. He was a straightforward
man himself and applied the same rules to others. He did not let
anyone indulge in any kind of corruption. He brought in many
changes, and since he was a strict disciplinarian, he ensured
that these were applied strictly. Change is always resisted. Bipin
had withdrawn all unnecessary sahayaks serving with retired
people, and many obsolete perks and privileges that are a part of
the army’s colonial legacy.’
Col Satpal insists that soldiers understood that Bipin always
had their welfare in mind. ‘Ask the jawans, and they will tell
you how much he cared for them. His orders were, “Look after
your men, give them facilities, make a di erence to their lives.”
But yes, he was tough with senior o cers. This was not liked by
people and is the reason why many started lobbying against
him’

•••
That day in 2019, when Bipin drove into the village ful lling a
wish he had harboured for many years, as many as 700
Garhwalis from around the area collected there to see the son of
Thati. Their chests swelled with pride that one of their own had
reached the top of his career, and was wearing his fame and
accomplishment so humbly. He became an instantaneous hero
to every village boy seeking a career in the forces. They followed
him when he walked across to Panchpura, his grandfather’s
ve-storey house made of wood and stone. They smiled as he
made himself comfortable on a cheap plastic chair and sipped a
cup of tea, reaching out for the home-made daal ke pakode,
telling his cousin’s family that they were the best he had ever
eaten. They hung upon his every word as he spoke of roads
being a sign of progress, and they believed him when he said he
dreamt of facilitating the construction of good medical and
engineering colleges in Garhwal to stop palayan (migration
from villages to the city). He was their hope for a better future.
Unfortunately, he could not live long enough to ful l those
dreams.
 23

‘My Father Was a Simple

Man’

8 December 2021
Day of the accident
Delhi District Court
Post noon

T
wenty-eight-year-old Tarini Rawat, a lawyer by
profession, had nished her work for the day and was
getting back from court, not really looking forward to
going home, since she knew her parents would not be there.
They had left that morning for Sulur in Tamil Nadu, from
where they were to go to Wellington, where her father, Gen.
Bipin Rawat, had an o cial engagement. They must have
reached by now, she thought, smiling as she remembered how
excited her mother had been the night before about meeting old
friends on that trip. She absent-mindedly reached for her cell
and was surprised to nd the many WhatsApp noti cations on
the screen. They appeared to be mentioning a helicopter crash.
Tarini just glanced at one in curiosity. And suddenly, her whole
world went blank.
 The crashed helicopter had been carrying her parents.

Meeting Tarini
17 May 2022
Dhaula Kuan
New Delhi
Tall, fair, bespectacled Tarini Rawat opens the door to the at
she has shifted into from Defence House, where she had been
living with her parents. There is a gentle smile on her young
face. For a twenty-nine-year-old who lost both her parents just
six months back, she is remarkably composed. She sits in front
of their photograph, wearing a suit that belonged to her mother,
and talks about the two people who loved her the most in life.
Behind her, they smile from a framed portrait: Gen. Rawat,
with his salt-and-pepper hair, looking handsome in a black
bandgala; Mrs Madhulika Rawat in an o -white silk sari draped
gracefully over her shoulders, a string of pearls around her
neck.
‘My mother always dressed very well, and she would often
share clothes with me, since we were almost the same size,’
Tarini says. ‘These days I wear her salwar kameez all the time.’
That is the only admission she makes to her emotional state.
She is missing her parents but is too digni ed to make that loss
public.

Memories from Kritika’s

Marriage
Tarini says some of her fondest memories of her parents are
from the time when her elder sister, Kritika, got married. The
match had been xed in late 2016, soon after Gen. Rawat had
shifted to Delhi from Pune to take over as Vice Chief. The boy,
Ankit Singh, had been suggested by a common friend and had
completely met the family’s expectations. He was from a
business family that owned dye and textile factories in
Mumbai. ‘My father and sister approved of Ankit. Mom and I
liked him too, she says. The marriage got nalized in November,
and very soon after that, on 17 December, it was announced
that Gen. Bipin Rawat would be the next Chief of Army Sta . In
January 2017, he took over, and, by the end of the month, the
Rawats shifted from 25 Safdarjung Road, the o cial residence
of the Vice Chief, to Army House, the Chief’s residence, at 4
Rajaji Marg.
The marriage was xed for 5 March, just ve days short of
Kritika’s thirtieth birthday. Tarini laughs about how pleased
Kritika was about getting married before she turned thirty.
Tarini remembers how chaotic it became for her mother, since
she had just taken over as rst lady and also president of the
Army Wives Welfare Association (AWWA) and had a lot of
responsibilities to handle.
‘In January she had to host the Army Day banquet in Chief’s
house. In February she had to host a garden party for the wives
of serving o cers. And in March there was the wedding, Tarini
recounts. ‘Mom got really busy.’
Life changed for her father even more. Foremost to be
addressed were security issues. He could no longer drive his
own car, so the silver-grey Maruti Suzuki Dzire, which he had
replaced his earlier grey Zen with, had to go into the garage. He
could no longer accompany his family for meals to restaurants.
He had to always move with security cover. And he became
extremely busy with the pressures of the appointment. He had
always been a workaholic, but now the job came with even more
demands on his time.
In spite of his new position, Kritika’s wedding was one time
when she saw her dad really excited, she says. That was the only
time she remembers when he took so much interest in what he
was going to wear. ‘Mom had ordered some gold-plated buttons
for a sherwani for the groom. When Papa saw the buttons, he
liked them so much that he said he was taking them for his own
sherwani . Mom had to order some more for Ankit, she shares
witha nostalgic smile.
He wore a well- tted bandgala, with the gold buttons he had
taken a fancy to, and an elegant safa, looking handsome and
happy, with Madhulika standing by his side in a beautiful
yellow sari. Tarini wore an orange Rajput poshak, and Kritika,
the bride, was stunningly attired in her mother’s red wedding
poshak that had specially been restitched and re tted for her.
For the family, it was a moment to be cherished.
Other than the wedding, Tarini says she has very few
memories of her father at family events. ‘He did not celebrate
his birthday, and even on our birthdays we did not do anything
very special. We didn’t go out too often as a family, because he
would be so busy, and also, he liked his dal, chawal and sabzi
meals—the regular ghar ka khana. My father was a simple man!

‘If He Could, He Would Have

Gone to Office Even on
Weekends’
Tarini remembers her father as a man who worked really hard
and, in spite of the high appointments he held, stayed in touch
with his roots. He was building a house in Dehradun, where he
planned to settle down after retirement, dreaming of spending
evenings on a rocking chair with a shawl draped over his
shoulders. He was also learning to speak Garhwali, which he
could understand well. ‘He would search for funny Garhwali
videos on YouTube and watch them in bed after an early dinner,
she says. He would also practise the Garhwali he was picking up
online with Garhwali speaking people.
On 1 December 2021, when Gen. Bipin Rawat was invited to
Srinagar in Pauri Garhwal to attend the ninth convocation of
the Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University, he made
time for it despite his busy schedule. Wearing a dark-blue robe
and hat, he addressed the gathering, starting with a Garhwali
phrase. ‘Sahmanya dagdaiyon (respected friends), he said with a
smile, much to the delight of the faculty members and students,
and then added that since it was a central university, he would
now be speaking in Hindi and English. He went on to tell the
students that he felt very nostalgic standing before them, that
he considered their university his own alma-mater, since he too
belonged to Garhwal; and he then went on to passionately tell
them about failure, and how it should be used as a learning and
a stepping stone to success.
‘We have seen him relaxed. We have seen him upset and
frustrated. But we never saw him discussing work. The bottom
line was that he would bring work home but never bothered us
with work-related issues. He always had a study in every house
we stayed in, where he would sit and do his o ce work. If he
could, he would have gone to o ce even on weekends,’ says
Tarini with a laugh.
 But after he became Chief, he stopped going to work on
holidays, because had he done that, the entire o ce sta would
have also had to come. He did not want to bother them and
would work from his home o ce, often sitting there for hours,
engrossed in work, dressed in his khadi kurta pajama—kurtas
that were mostly bought by his wife, who would pick them up
from Khadi Bhandar.
Tarini says her father had simple tastes when it came to
clothes. She mostly remembers him in his light-coloured shirts
and trousers, PT rig or the kurta pajamas that he would wear at
home. ‘Clothes were the last thing on his mind,’ she says. ‘If he
needed anything, he would ask his buddies to get it from the
Cantonment market, and they would just go and buy stu . Mom
would sometimes get a little irritated, and she would go to
Khadi Bhandar and pick up kurtas in pastel shades for him,’
Tarini remembers how her father used to watch comedy
shows to let o steam after work. ‘Generally, after dinner, he
would change into his kurta pajama, switch on his television
and watch Tata Sky, which had a channel reserved exclusively
for comedy,’ she says.
Talent-hunt shows like Little Champs or Dance India Dance,
and others on music and dance would also interest him, and if a
particular participant had really impressed him, he would tell
the family about him or her, asking them to watch the show
too.

Torpedoes Shooting
around His House
Bipin Rawat loved his dogs. They were his family, and Tarini
says there were no rules for them. ‘When we were in our Noida
house, they would often jump on his bed and refuse to get o ,
so he would go to sleep with them cuddled around him,’ she
recounts, adding though, that when her mother had decided to
bring home their rst dog, Ginger, a dachshund, her father had
been completely against it.
Madhulika had always had dogs in her house when she was
growing up and had decided that her family was incomplete
without one. Though Bipin was against getting a dog, she
overruled him and brought home a dachshund puppy that she
named Ginger. ‘Eventually, Dad was the one who started
pampering Ginger the most,’ Tarini says with a smile.
Soon after, they got Dash, another dachshund. When Ginger
died, Dash got lonely and started getting depressed, and the
Rawats decided to get him company. ‘We adopted Tickle, a ten-
month old dachshund, through the Society for Prevention of
Cruelty towards Animals,’ Tarini says.
The youngest, Bailey, came when the family was living in the
Chief’s house. ‘Dash had gotten really old, and we got him as a
replacement in advance,’ says Tarini. The dogs were his stress-
busters and much-loved members of the family. They could
barge into his television interviews and scamper around him
when he was talking to guests.
The rst interview he gave as Chief, while still living in the
o cial residence of the Vice Chief, was to journalist Sandeep
Unnithan, who mentions Dash and Tickle, dressed in red and
black trimmed winter eece, shooting around him like twin
torpedoes while a eet of black armoured Scorpios waited to
take Bipin to his South Block o ce.
Tarini remembers how, during an Aaj Tak interaction with
journalist Manjeet Negi, Dash, Tickle and Bailey—returning
from a walk—had caught sight of Gen. Rawat, barged past the
cameramen and run up to him, while the interview was going
on. The cameras had to be stopped and restarted after the
General had petted all three and sent them o .

Mamma and Her John

Denver Songs
Tarini says that since her father was mostly serving in eld
areas and, later on, busy in his very prestigious appointments,
she has more memories of her mother than of him. Madhulika
was the one the girls spent most of their time with. She likes to
point out that though both her parents were completely
di erent people, they were quite similar in many ways. ‘They
were both social and outgoing, and enjoyed interacting with
people. My mother would set time aside to meet her college
friends and keep her schedule open for people. Papa kept busy,
but there would never be any awkwardness when he met a new
person. If he did not know you, he would try to know you
better. He was genuinely interested in other people.’
They both liked music as well. ‘Mamma liked old music, from
Hindi lms, as well as classics like the Beatles and John Denver.
She would give me lists to download for her. When Nani was
with us during the Covid lockdown, Mamma had bought a
Caravan radio for her. So, through the day, we would have old
Hindi lm songs playing in the house, and we would be
humming along with them,’ she says.
Her father’s music choice would keep changing, Tarini says.
Sometimes he would be listening to Su songs, at other times
Gorkhali folk songs. Though he was not a great singer, he would
happily take the mic and sing Nepali songs with his troops,
cracking jokes and dancing with them at badakhanas. He could
sit on his haunches with arms akimbo and do the jhamre dance,
throwing his legs in the air e ortlessly. Bipin spoke uent
Gorkhali as well. Madhulika and the girls had picked it up too.
‘Mamma loved to travel,’ says Tarini. Though she had stayed
in Noida with her in-laws when the children were younger and
Bipin was doing his Kashmir and Congo tenures, after the girls
grew up Madhulika would be by his side during most of his
work-related travel. If she was ying with him, she would make
videos of the landscape below and send those to the family.
‘Sometimes, she would even record the pilot announcing
where they were ying and which ghats or river they were
crossing. She would always involve us in whatever she was
doing, wherever she was, says Tarini.
Madhulika was a hands-on mother who always had time for
her family. She would display her a ection for her daughters at
every chance she got. She would take them for movies, stitch
clothes for them, celebrate their achievements and handle their
disappointments. She would share with them jokes, emotions
and fashion advice, along with her best saris and her favourite
John Denver songs. And she is gone now. But she has left behind
a heart full of memories that no one can take from them and a
closet full of clothes that still smell of her perfume. ‘I wear them
all the time. It’s like I still have her around me, says Tarini, with
a smile.
 24

‘Sahab Ko Toh Aaj Hero Ban

Ke Hi Jana Hai’

8 December 2021
P-94 A, Shankar Vihar
New Delhi 7.15 am.

G
eetika Lidder had just completed her morning puja when
she heard her husband’s raised voice. Brigadier
Lakhbinder Singh Lidder, SM, VSM, had a heart of gold
but a short temper. He appeared annoyed. ‘Uniform pe normal
lanyard kyun lagaaya hua hai(Why have you attached a normal
lanyard [cord worn around the shoulder] on the uniform)?’ he
was asking his sahayak, Rohit. ‘Aaj aglets lagaane the (Today
aglets [ceremonial braided cord with metal] had to be attached).
Geetika rushed to Rohit’s rescue. ‘Toni, humein kya pata aapki
uniform mein kaunse din kya lagaana hota hai (How do we know
what attach to your uniform when), she reasoned. Jab hum
aglets lagaa ke rakhte hain, aap bolte ho, Dulha bana ke bhej dete
ho. Lanyard lagaya karo (When we attach aglets, you say, Don’t
send me dressed like a bridegroom).
 Brig. Lidder had cooled down by then. ‘Aaj change karne ka
time hi nahi hoga (I won’t get time to change today). The
chopper will land at Wellington, and we will go straight for the
lecture,’ he said.
‘Aglets laga do bhaiya. Sahab ko toh aaj hero ban ke hi jana hai
(Sahab wants to go dressed as a hero today), Geetika told the
relieved sahayak, smiling at her husband as she left the room.
A few hours later, Brig. Lidder was on a chopper bound for
Wellington. He was in his ceremonial dress: stars shining,
aglets sparkling, boots brushed to a subtle sheen. The chopper
was destined never to reach its destination.

•••
‘I have played those lines in my mind so many times, says
Geetika Lidder, sipping from a steaming-hot cup of tea in the
beautifully done-up house, where she now lives with her dog,
Peeva, daughter, Aashna, and memories of her beloved husband
of twenty- ve years, who walked out of the door that morning
after kissing her on the cheek and did not return.
She remembers a ectionately how the late Brig. Lakhbinder,
or Toni, as she used to call him, always took much pride in his
tness and how he was turned out. ‘He left the house for the
last time in his uniform, so t, so well-dressed, looking as
handsome as ever. That was how he lived and that’s how he
would have wanted to go, she says, a fond smile playing on her
lips.
Geetika says she would always see Toni o at the door and
then wave him goodbye from the balcony as he got into his car
and disappeared from view, and would turn the Buddhist
prayer wheel xed on the wall as she came back in. ‘That day, I
was taking an online class from 8.15 a.m. to 8.30 a.m., and so I
didn’t go out to see him o . Ijust put my video o when it was
time for him to go. He gave me the customary peck on the
cheek, and I told him, “Aashna ko utha dena, uska exam hai
(Wake Aashna up. It’s her exam).” And I went back to my class.’
Geetika was teaching class ve at The Shri Ram School.
Brig. Lakhbinder used to carry two cellphones with him all
the time, and he would stay in touch on WhatsApp. ‘Landed at
Coimbatore, boarding for
Coonoor, said a message he’d sent Geetika around 11.48 a.m.,
from one of his cells. ‘Enjoy Wellington, it has given us so
much,’ she had replied, remembering how Toni had won the
Scudder there, and how she had won the Navy Queen and
danced with Gen. Sam Manekshaw. ‘We both made some very
special friends there, and I conceived Aashna. Wellington had
been special for us,’ she says.
Earlier that day, while going to ask the cook to make another
round of tea that her husband had asked for, she had run into
Gen. Rawat’s bodyguards, the young smiling commandos who
were also travelling to Wellington in the same chopper. They
had dropped by on the way to the airport to pick up
Lakhbinder’s luggage, as they always did before a ight. It
would be placed in the plane earlier, so that no time was wasted
while boarding at Palam.
‘Chhutti ja rahe ho, bhaiya (Are you going on a holiday)?’ she
had asked the one standing at the entrance. He had smiled and
nodded. ‘Hanji, ma’am, kal Wellington se wapis aayenge, agle din
Indian Military Academy aur phir Saturday se chhutti (We return
from Wellington tomorrow and the next day it’s Military
Academy, and then I am on a holiday from Saturday)’
 And the evening before, Geetika had gone across to Defence
House to meet Madhulika Rawat.

•••
7 December 2021
Defence House
6 p.m.
Slim, dark-haired, attractive Geetika Lidder had left the house
and was walking across to the sta entry where her car was
parked. She had spent close to two hours with Madhulika
Rawat, brie ng her on whom she was expected to meet in
Wellington, what gifts needed to be carried and what protocol
needed to be followed. Being the Defence Assistant’s wife, she
routinely did this for all o cial trips made by the lady.
Their interaction was warm and pleasant, as always. Geetika
then walked across to her car, her mind already on Aashna, her
sixteen-year-old daughter, who had a board exam the next day.
She caught sight of a Zomato bike parked near the gate of
Defence House and joked in Gorkhali with the guards on duty,
‘Ketaharu Zomato ma kin yati dhaire paisa kharch garchan
(Why do the boys spend so much money on Zomato)?’ Since 2
JAK RIF, Lakhbinder’s unit, had two Gorkha companies, Geetika
had learnt to speak Gorkhali.
The guard laughed and said, ‘Langar ko food ramro chai na,
memsahib (Langar food is not too great, ma’am)’. Geetika smiled
and sat in the waiting car. In fteen minutes she was home. She
knew Toni would not be back before 9 p.m.
Checking on Aashna, who was studying, Geetika changed
into her night suit, leant back on to the pillows and thanked god
for all the gifts life had bestowed on her, the biggest among
them being her husband, Toni, whom she had met when she
was seventeen and he a newly commissioned o cer in the
Indian Army. Tall and handsome, he had swept her o her feet
when she was still at school, and ever since he had been the
most precious thing in her life. Geetika breathed a sigh of
contentment and got engrossed in the book she had been
reading.

•••
‘If he is watching, he should know that his girls are ne’
When she thinks back, Geetika says she often remembers the
conversation she had with her husband the morning he left.
The Lidders had been sitting together, having their second cup
of tea, when, out of the blue, Lakhbinder had looked at her
tenderly and said, ‘You know what, Geets? Your God has been
really kind to us. We always got more than we thought about.’
‘Now when I look back, that was such a nice message he gave
me,’ she reminisces. ‘He told me he was happy and contented.’ It
had been a rare admission of faith by a man who was not much
of a believer. Geetika was the one to start her day with prayers.
She confesses that her life as an infantry man’s wife was
stressful. ‘Every patrol he went for would weigh on my mind,
and I would wait for him to get home safe. I would be fasting
twice a week, even three times if he was in a eld posting. All I
prayed for was his happiness and safety.’
But lately, the strain had eased o . Toni had been promoted
to the rank of Major General and was to join as General O cer
Commanding somewhere in J&K in a month’s time. ‘He had
reached a position where I could breathe easy. I had become
complacent, since I felt he was no longer going to do
assignments that would put his life at risk,’ she says with a wry
smile.
The night before she had eetingly asked Toni to stay back.
‘Must you go?’ she had asked. ‘It’s getting very hectic for you.
Besides, your brother is leaving for Canada on the tenth.’
He had replied, ‘Bas ye last hi toh hai (This is the last one).
Gen. Rawat should not feel I am in the PONY [posted out not
interested] mood.’

•••
8 December 2021
1.30 p.m.
Geetika was at an online school meeting with her phone on
silent mode when she noticed an incoming call. It was from
Brig. Anil Pundir, who happened to be a close friend of the
family. She ignored it and continued with the meeting. A few
minutes later, the call ashed again. Geetika ignored it one
more time. But when the cell vibrated for the third time, she
muted herself at the meeting and took the call.
‘Ma’am, TV dekh rahe ho (Are you watching TV)?” Anil asked.
A puzzled Geetika replied, ‘Nahi, Anil, TV kahan dekh rahi hun
(No, I am not watching TV). lamina meeting.’
‘Has Sir gone along with CDS?’ Anil asked.
‘Yes, he has,’ an exasperated Geetika replied, wanting to get
back to work.
 ‘Ma’am, there has been a small accident, Anil said. He
sounded worried.
Soon, the house started lling up with people. Both her
maasis had reached. Geetika was surprised to nd one of them
calling up her mother and saying, ‘Achaa aap chale nahi ho
(Haven’t you left)?’
‘Aap unko kyun bula rahe ho, Maasi. Abhi toh gaye the (Why are
you calling them, Maasi. They’d just left). They are old, they
can’t travel so much. If Toni is hurt, I might have to go to
Wellington tomorrow,’ Geetika found herself saying.
Since her parents had been in Delhi most of November, she
did not want to trouble them again. From 1-14 November, they
had stayed with Aashna, while Toni and Geetika had done a
Prague trip with Gen. and Mrs Rawat. Later they had come
again for the Lidders’ twenty- fth wedding anniversary and
then for Aashna’s book launch.
‘I was not being allowed to watch TV, and I never thought
that it was so serious,’ she says.
Soon, people from her school also started collecting in the
house. Her school principal and director were both there, as
were other friends and colleagues. People were talking in
whispers around her. A worried Geetika had tried to get in
touch with her husband’s NDC course mate at Wellington, but
he did not take her call. She had also called the CDS exchange,
pleading with them, ‘Meri kisi bhi Deputy Defence Assistant
Sahab se baat kara do (Let me speak to any of the Defence
Assistant Sahabs).’ There were three of those— one each from
the army, navy and air force. The exchange had told her, ‘Ma’am,
koi nahi mil raha, sab busy hain (All are busy).’ She had then
called up Sta O cer Lt Col Aarti, who told her, ‘Ma’am, kuch
pata nahi chal raha. Main Tarini ke saath hun (We still don’t
know the details. I am with Tarini).’
By evening, Veena Naravane, wife of COAS Gen. M.M.
Naravane, had also come over, which made Geetika wonder, ‘tne
bade log yahan kyun aa gaye hain (Why are such important
people coming here).
‘I kept thinking, Accident ho gaya toh kya hua. Theek ho
jayenge (So what if he has had an accident. He will soon be
better), she says.
Mrs Naravane told her that there were three survivors.
‘Why is it so di cult to identify him, she asked him. ‘He must
be the tallest there.’
Around 5 p.m., timed with the Defence Minister’s visit to
Defence House, where he o ered his condolences to Tarini, the
Deputy Defence Attaché, Indian Navy, Captain Robin
Chakravarty, came to Geetika, who was sitting on her bed with a
maala in her hand, looking completely confused. He was in
uniform. In the presence of Mrs Naravane, Robin took o his cap
and broke the news to Geetika, saying, ‘Ma’am, he was the nicest
man I knew.’
Geetika says she does not remember what happened next,
but possibly she broke down and then went looking for Anil,
who was her comfort space at that point in time. She
remembers telling people, ‘I wish chot lag jaati, main sab dekh
leti, main sab kar leti (I wish he were wounded, I would have
taken care of everything). Main business kar leti (I would have
started a business). But there should have been life. With him I
could do anything, not without him.’
 Around 1.30 a.m., her parents had also reached the house
from Chandigarh. ‘It was very tough to see them,’ she says.
‘They were inconsolable.’
Geetika had been given Alprax injections, but she could not
get to sleep. All night she kept wandering around the house
followed by Peeva, telling Rohit, their sahayak, to take away all
the saris she had collected over the years. ‘Itni saari ikatthi kar li
hain. Ab main kahan pehnungi, Rohit? Tum le jana (So many have
been collected. Where will I wear these now? You take them),
she repeatedly told him.
She asked people gathered in the lawn why they had come
over when it was so cold and told them to go back to their
homes. She met Aashna a few times, but it was only after
everyone had left that she sat down with Aashna, and the two
of them grieved for what they had lost. ‘We just could not
understand the way forward or what was going to happen to us.
All my thought were centered around: How could this happen
to us? How could he go? How could he do this?’ she remembers.
The next morning Geetika went for her bath, where she let
her tears ow freely, tricking down her face with the bath
water. When she came out, she was completely composed. She
found the house echoing with the loud wails of her mother,
who was thumping her forehead in sadness, frustration and
anger.
‘She was constantly going, “Humara bachcha itna achcha hai.
Uske saath aisa kaise ho gaya (Our child is so good. How could
this happen to her)?” By then I had made peace with my god,
and I told her, “Ab to ye ho gaya na mere saath (Now this has
happened with me). Now, there is no why. Let’s see how we will
go on, but we have to stop cursing destiny.’
 After that, she says, she cried only in the privacy of her
bedroom, having decided that she would not make a public
spectacle of her grief. ‘My mother-in-law was inconsolable. She
did not deserve this. I did not deserve this. None of us deserved
it, but it happened. It was our destiny, and we have to live with
it in the best possible way we can.’

•••
9 December 2021 Shankar Vihar
Geetika went across to Defence House to see how Tarini, Kritika
and Agnes, wife of Lt Col Harjinder Singh, were doing. ‘I knew I
had to see them. We were in it together, she says. Bound by a
common sense of deep loss, all four stood together at that tough
time, handling their grief with remarkable stoicism. The entire
day went waiting for the bodies to be brought back. Finally,
around 7.30 p.m., two members from each family were asked to
come to Palam to receive their loved ones. Geetika went across
to Aashna and told her that her father was a much-respected
man. ‘I have always felt very proud of who we are and who he is,
even when he was a Captain. So I told her we had no reason to
let him down, and we were not going to make a public spectacle
of ourselves So you’d better brace up and dress up.
A devastated Aashna insisted that she would go to the airport
as she was. But Geetika was rm. ‘You will go as your father
would have liked to see you,’ she said, making her daughter
wear her coat, trousers and scarf. She then opened her own box
of saris and took out a nice silk sari, put on some light make-up
and did her hair. ‘I went to Palam as
 Mrs Lidder should have gone. It was a de ning moment,’ she
says.
When the families reached Palam, the night was cold. Geetika
says her teeth were chattering. The Prime Minister had come
there to o er condolences. Kritika and Tarini were completely
composed. Like typical military daughters, they handled their
grief with the utmost dignity, as did Agnes. Preet, their teenage
daughter, was quite numb. ‘Overall, it was a hard day, but I
think we held up well,’ Geetika says.
The toughest moment for her was to see the co n, with
‘Brig. L.S. Lidder’ written on it. ‘I felt, there is the man I love. I
wish I had enough to hold him or touch a hand. There was no
closure there. It is something I will always miss.’
The last rites were to be done the next morning at Brar
Square, but Geetika insisted that the co n be brought home
before that. ‘We got owers and did up the house. We brought
him home. I wanted Peeva to see him. There was not much that
you could see in the co n, but he did come home, andI am
proud of the fact that I didn’t break down. And because I didn’t,
my daughter didn’t. I think she was completely mirroring my
behaviour. All the time her eyes were on me.’
She adds, ‘I always told him that he had brought me up to be
exactly the way he wanted. In his last moments also, I was
exactly the way he would have liked… What has happened with
me and my daughter is very harsh. Toni wouldn’t have liked us
to struggle. He wouldn’t have liked me to draw a pension at
forty-eight. We had plans to travel, to enjoy life, to be an
interesting old couple. That was not to be. However, he has left
enough love around us. Grief is private and we have kept it that
way. I think I outdo myself to be happy, to look happy, to party
with my friends, to keep the house as it used to be. If he is
watching, he should know that his girls are ne’
 25

‘Hum Ja Rahe Hain, Beta’:

Tarini’s Last Memory

7 December 2021
Defence House, Kamraj Road
New Delhi
8 p.m.
Tarini, the younger of the Rawats’ two daughters, was in her
bed, a pillow propped up behind her back, reading a book with a
cozy mink blanket pulled up to her chin, when she heard her
mother call out. Madhulika was holding up a clothes hanger
displaying her new sari with one hand, the other resting on her
waist, curved ngers crinkling the folds of her soft cotton
kaftan. ‘Main Wellington mein ye sari pehenne wali hun kal (I will
be wearing this sari in Wellington tomorrow). What colour
blouse will look good with this?’ she asked, a frown creasing her
forehead.
Tarini, who was a practising lawyer at the Delhi District
Court, had lately become her mom’s fashion consultant. Putting
her book face-down beside her pillow, she pushed her glasses
further up her nose and, swinging her legs o the bed, walked
across to the dressing room that connected her bedroom to her
parents’. Her mother stood with an open suitcase, packing for
her two-day trip to Wellington, where Gen. Bipin Rawat had to
deliver a lecture.
Tarini could see her dad through the half-open door on the
other side. He was in his khadi kurta pajama, leaning back on
the headboard of his bed, arms folded behind his head, one knee
resting on another, deeply engrossed in watching the news on
television. His suitcase had already been packed by his
sahayaks. The uniform he was to wear the next morning had
been neatly ironed and hung in his cupboard, medals rubbed to
a sparkle. His polished boots were in the shoe rack.
The Rawats were ying to Wellington the next morning on
an Indian Air Force plane that would take them from Palam to
Sulur, from where another helicopter would take them to
Wellington. The General had had a long day at work. He had
returned from o ce late in the evening. When he walked in,
Tarini sat in the room playing with the dogs. He had smiled at
her and patted Bailey the dachshund, who had run across to
him, wagging its tail.
The family had an early dinner of sandwiches and soup at 7
p.m., after which Bipin settled down to watch television while
Madhulika opened her cupboard and got busy with packing. She
was a little worried about the busy schedule, since she did not
like leaving Tarini alone for too long. They were to return on 9
December and then go to Dehradun to attend the passing out
parade at the Indian Military Academy, where Gen. Rawat had
been invited as chief guest.
Tarini frowned in concentration, looking at the two blouses
her mom was holding up against her sari. ‘Ye better lagega (This
one will look better), she said, picking one.
Madhulika folded it neatly and packed it in her suitcase
obediently, smiling at her younger daughter. ‘I am so looking
forward to meeting Gen. and Mrs Anbu,’ Madhulika said, her
eyes sparkling. Lieutenant General Devraj Anbu, PVSM, UYSM,
AVSM, YSM, SM, ADC, former Vice Chief of Army Sta (VCOAS),
had retired from service in 2019 and settled down in
Wellington. Madhulika was very close to the couple and was
planning to spend an afternoon with them.
Tarini yawned.
‘Achha ab ja ke soja (Now go and sleep). I shall wake you up
when we are leaving,’ Madhulika said, looking over her shoulder
a ectionately.
Tarini trod back to her bed. She was still reading when, from
the corner of her eye, she noticed her mom shutting the small
suitcase which she was planning to take as cabin baggage and
clicking the number lock in place. She had then switched o the
dressing-room light and gone to her bedroom, gently pulling
the connecting door shut behind her. Tarini could spot a chink
of yellow light slipping in through the gap at the bottom of her
parents’ bedroom door.
She knew Dad must have fallen asleep watching television,
since he had come back home so tired. Mom must have brushed
her teeth and applied her night cream. Tarini thought she could
hear the soft thuds of her feet walking back to her side of the
bed. She imagined her mother leaning across to remove Dad’s
spectacles and pushing his u ed-up pillow down so that he
did not twist his neck and wake up with a crick. She must have
pulled up the blanket and snuggled down into the pillows,
turning to her left, which was how she usually slept, and
reaching out to switch o her bedside lamp. There was a gentle
click and, suddenly, the dressing room too was plunged into
darkness.
Tarini read for a little while longer, soaking in the comfort of
her parents’ a ection that seeped into her room even through
the closed door and thick walls. Soon, her eyelids got heavy, and
she started missing entire sentences. She found herself
rereading the same lines again and again, and decided she was
too sleepy to read any longer. Marking the page she was reading,
she placed the book on her side table, switched o her lamp and
closed her eyes. Within seconds she was asleep.

•••
8 December 2021
8.45 a.m.
‘I vaguely remember Mom ru ing my hair in the morning
while I was still in deep sleep. “Hum ja rahe hain, beta (We are
leaving),” she said. I just mumbled bye and went back to sleep.
She would always wake me up when she was going somewhere,’
Tarini remembers.
She says she did not see her dad since he had already changed
and was probably outside, discussing o cial engagements with
his sta o cers. The Rawats had a guest that morning: Subedar
Major Bhisma Shrestha, from 5/11 GR, who had retired on 30
November. Since he had also served with Gen. Rawat as his
Aide-de-Corps 2 (ADC2), he had come over with his wife,
Amrita, to say goodbye. The General would never say no to
anyone who wished to see him, and soldiers from the regiment
were very special. Both Bipin and Madhulika met the Nepali
couple with a lot of a ection, and Bipin spoke to them in
awless Gorkhali. He asked about their health, their post-
retirement plans and how their children were doing.
Shrestha Sahab requested him for a photograph, and the
couple readily agreed. The four of them had a picture taken
together and, after having a cup of tea with their guests, Gen.
and Mrs Rawat left. That was to be the last picture of the CDS
and his wife. Tarini has it now, since it was sent to her by one of
the General’s sta o cers. In the photo, her father stands
upright, resplendent in his uniform, and her mother stands by
his side in a dark-blue salwar kameez, looking peaceful and
relaxed. The Shresthas are beside them, smiling into the
camera.
Dash, Tickle and Bailey, the three family dachshunds, were
scampering around the house when the photo was being taken,
annoyed that they were not being allowed to meet the guests.
Tarini was fast asleep in her room just a few feet away. No one
had any inkling of the terrible tragedy that was about to befall.

8 December 2021
6.03 p.m.
A series of tweets put out by the Indian Air Force
con rm what the country has been dreading, engul ng
people in a wave of shock and disbelief:
Gen Bipin Rawat, Chiof eDe ence Sta (CDS) was on a
visit to Defence Services Sta College, Wellington
(Nilgiri Hills) to address the faculty and student
o cers of the Sta Course today. Around noon today,
an IAF Mi 17 V5 helicopter with a crew of 4 members
carrying the CDS and 9 other passengers met with a
tragic accident near Coonoor, TN.
With deep regret, it has now been ascertained that Gen
Bipin Rawat, Mrs Madhulika Rawat and 11 other
persons on board have died in the unfortunate
accident.
Gp Capt. Varun Singh SC, Directing Sta at DSSC with
injuries is currently under treatment at Military
Hospital, Wellington.
 Epilogue

On 8 December 2021, around 12.20 p.m., the Mi-17 helicopter

carrying Chief of Defence Sta General Bipin Rawat, his wife,
Madhulika Rawat, and twelve others crashed into a heavily
wooded area of the Coonoor ghat in the Nilgiris, western Tamil
Nadu, barely 10 km from its landing site. Visibility was said to
be limited that day. Had everything gone well, the Mi-17 it
would have landed at the Wellington Golf Club helipad in
another seven minutes. Gen. Rawat was going to deliver a
lecture at the Defence Services Sta College (DSSC), Wellington.
According to media reports, the Mi-17 took o from the Sulur
air base at 11.45 a.m. It lost contact with air tra c control
around 12.08 p.m.
Shortly past 6 p.m., the Indian Air Force con rmed that
General Rawat, his wife and ten others on board had died. The
sole survivor at the crash site, Group Captain Varun Singh, who
su ered severe burns, was initially treated at the Military
Hospital, Wellington, and then taken to Command Hospital,
Bangalore, where, despite all the e orts to save his life, he
succumbed to his injuries on 15 December.

The timeline for the helicopter crash has been taken

from ABP News and India Today reports.
 A Few Good Men

T
welve of our country’s nest men in uniform lost their
lives in the helicopter crash that took Gen. Bipin Rawat
and Madhulika Rawat. They were the best in their eld,
which was why they were serving with the Chief of Defence
Sta . Their demise was not just heartbreaking for their families
but also a terrible loss for the nation.

Brig. L.S. Lidder, SM, VSM

Brig. Lakhwinder Singh Lidder, or Toni, as he was a ectionately
called by friends and family, was Defence Assistant to the CDS.
He was from 2 Jammu and Kashmir Ri es and spoke uent
Gorkhali, since his unit had two Gorkha companies. He had
brie y served with Gen. Rawat in Congo and later hosted him
and Mrs Rawat on a ten-day trip they had made to Kazakhstan,
where Brig. Lidder was posted as Military Attaché. He had
obviously made an impression since he was handpicked by Gen.
Rawat for the post of Defence Adviser.
Brig. Lidder hailed from Panchkula, Haryana, and was a
second-generation army o cer. Besides being an exceptional
o cer, he was a loving husband and son, and a doting father,
who had got his daughter’s rst book of poetry published in
November 2021. He had been approved for his next rank and
was to take over as General O cer Commanding of an army
division. He is survived by his wife, Geetika, and sixteen-year-
old daughter, Aashna.

Lt Col Harjinder Singh

Col Harjinder Singh was born on 17 April 1978. His pet name
was Monty. It had been given to him a ectionately by his
grandfather, a Major in the army, who was a fan of the
legendary British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. Harjinder
and his brother, Tejinder, were just twenty and sixteen,
respectively, when their father, Col Abinder Singh, who was
from the Corps of Engineers and posted in Delhi, succumbed to
brain hemorrhage.
Barely three months later, they lost their mother to
pancreatitis. While Tejinder, who was then in the twelfth
standard, went to Lucknow with his uncle to nish his
schooling, Harjinder shifted to the Army Boys Hostel in Delhi,
completed his graduation and then joined the O cers Training
Academy, Chennai, from where he graduated and got
commissioned into 2/11 Gorkha Ri es in September 2001.
Tejinder subsequently joined the Corps of Engineers and is
commanding a unit now.
While serving in Baisakhi, Arunachal Pradesh, with the 40
Infantry Brigade, Harjinder met Maj. Agnes Menezes, who
happened to be posted there as Education O cer. The two of
them fell in love and got married when posted together in the
Indian Military Academy, Dehradun. Harjinder was under
posting as Camp Commandant of the Uri Brigade, when he
received a personal call from Gen. Bipin Rawat, asking him if he
would like be Sta O cer to the CDS. Harjinder agreed, and his
posting got diverted to Delhi. Harjinder had been picked up by
the General since he had the reputation of being an honest and
straightforward o cer.
Col Harjinder was a sincere soldier, a devoted husband and a
loving father to his daughter, Preet, who was just thirteen when
he passed away.

Naik Gursewak Singh

Naik Gursewak Singh, from 9 Para Special Forces, had been
serving as Principal Sta O cer to Gen. Rawat for three years.
Gursewak had joined the Indian Army in 2000 and was posted
in Udhampur before being attached with Gen. Rawat three
years ago. Most of his career years in the Army were spent in the
frontier areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh and Poonch. He
was a demolition specialist and an expert in unarmed combat
and close-quarter battle.
Naik Gursewak was a native of Dode Sodhian village in Tarn
Taran district and is survived by his wife, Jaspreet Kaur, two
daughters aged nine and seven, and a three-year-old son.

Naik Jitender Kumar

Naik Jitender Kumar, from 3 Para Special Forces, was Personal
Sta O cer (PSO) to the CDS. He had enrolled in March 2011.
He had served extensively in the desert sector along the Indo-
Pak border, at the India-China border near Pithoragarh and in
J&K. He was an expert sniper and a specialist in
communications. He belonged to Dhamanda village in Sehore
district, and is survived by his wife, his ve-year-old daughter
and two-year-old son.
Lance Naik B. Sai Teja
Lance Naik B. Sai Teja, twenty-seven, was also PSO to the CDS
and had enrolled in 2013. He belonged to 11 Para Special Forces
and had served in highaltitude areas in Arunachal Pradesh,
along the border with China. He had participated in
counterterrorism operations in Manipur and Nagaland. An
expert of mixed martial arts, unarmed combat, and
communications and electronic warfare, Lance Naik Teja
belonged to Eguva Regada village in Chit-toor district of Andhra
Pradesh. He came from a family of farmers. His brother,
Mahesh, also serves in the Army. Teja is survived by his parents,
wife and two children, aged one and three.

Lance Naik Vivek Kumar

Lance Naik Vivek Kumar belonged to 1 Para Special Forces. He
had enrolled in December 2012, and had served in south and
north Kashmir, as well as ahead of Spiti, at a location near the
India— China border. He was a communications expert, and a
specialist in combat freefall and unarmed combat. Lance Naik
Vivek came from Jaisinhpur in Kangra district of Himachal
Pradesh. He was PSO to Gen. Rawat.

Havildar Satpal Rai

Havildar Satpal Rai, forty, who came from Takdah, Darjeeling,
was the Personal Security O cer of the
CDS. He was from 5/11 Gorkha Ri es, same as Gen. Rawat,
and had enrolled in March 2002. Hav. Rai had served in Siachen,
Naushera, Nagaland and Manipur. He is survived by his wife,
Mandira Rai, and his nineteen-year-old son, who, joined 5/11
GR a year back.

Group Captain Varun

Singh, SC
Gp Capt. Varun Singh belonged to a family of soldiers. He was
posted at the Defence Services Sta College as Directing Sta .
Singh’s father, Colonel K.P. Singh (retd), served in Army Air
Defence, while his brother, Lieutenant Commander Tanuj
Singh, is an o cer in the Indian Navy.
Gp Capt. Singh was awarded the Shaurya Chakra on
Independence Day in 2021, for saving his light combat aircraft
(LCA) Tejas during an aerial emergency on 12 October 2020.
When his aircraft was facing emergency issues and needed to
be vacated, not only did Varun stay in his aircraft but also
managed to land it safely, despite technical hitches, averting a
crash. He was awarded the Shaurya Chakra by the President of
India for this act of bravery. Singh’s Shaurya Chakra citation
says he showed a ‘high order of professionalism, composure and
quick decision making, even at risk to his life. He not only
averted the loss of an LCA, but also safeguarded civilian
property and population on the ground’
Singh belonged to Deoria in eastern Uttar Pradesh. On 8
December, he was the sole survivor at the helicopter crash site.
He was rst treated at the military hospital in Wellington and
later shifted to the Bengaluru Command Hospital. But he
succumbed to his injuries on 15 December. The thirty-nine-
year-old test pilot is survived by his wife, Gi-tanjali, and their
two children—eleven-yearold son, Radduman, and eight-year-
old daughter, Aradhya.
Wing Commander Prithvi
Singh Chauhan
Wing Commander Prithvi Singh Chauhan, forty-two, was an
accomplished pilot serving as Commanding O cer of the 109
Helicopter Unit, based at Sulur. He was piloting the ill-fated Mi-
17 V5 helicopter when it crashed. The only brother to four
sisters, he was the youngest of ve siblings. The family was
originally based in Madhya Pradesh, where Prithvi attended
school. In 2006, they moved to Agra, where Prithvi’s father
started a bakery business. Prithvi studied at the Sainik School in
Rewa, Madhya Pradesh, and got selected for the National
Defence Academy. He went on to join the Air Force Academy
and got his commission on 22 June 2002. His old parents had
been waiting for him to come home in January.
He is survived by his wife, Kamini, twelve-year-old daughter,
Aradhya, and nine-year-old son, Aviraj.

Squadron Leader Kuldeep

Singh
Sqn Ldr Kuldeep Singh was the co-pilot of the helicopter. He
belonged to Gharana Khurd, a small village in Rajasthan’s
Jnunjhunu district, and had joined the Indian Air Force as a
helicopter pilot in June 2015. Sqn Ldr Singh studied at Kendriya
Vidyalaya, Mumbai, and then went to St Xavier’s College. He
came from a defence family and wanted tojoin the Air Force.
Sqn Ldr Kuldeep is survived by his wife. They had been married
for just two years. She had been with him in Coimbatore, which
was his last posting.
Junior Warrant Officer
Rana Pratap Das
A native of Talcher, Odisha, JWO Rana Pratap Das had enrolled
in the Indian Air Force in June 2006 and had served for twelve
years. He is survived by his wife and one-year-old son.

Junior Warrant Officer

Pradeep Arakkal
JWO Pradeep Arakkal was the chief engineer of the Mi-17 and
had served in the Air Force for nineteen years. He belonged to
Thrissur district in Kerala and had participated in many major
operations taken on by the Air Force, including anti-Maoist
missions in Chhattisgarh, and ood-rescue operations carried
out during the 2018 deluge in Kerala. He is survived by his wife,
seven-year-old son and two-year-old daughter.
 Acknowledgements

This book could not have been written if Col Satpal Parmar, the
late General Bipin Rawat’s mamaji, and Lt Gen Rakesh Sharma,
his closest friend, had not guided me through my arduous
journey as I tried to piece together his life from interviews with
people who knew him best. Not only did both of them give me
time and interviews, they also helped me with contacts and
phone numbers, introduced me to people who might not have
talked to me otherwise and patiently veri ed the information I
was unsure about. It reached a point when, I suspect, they
started dreading my phone calls and WhatsApp messages. Gen.
Sharma, in fact, ribbed me that I should be sharing royalty with
him since I was treating him like my research assistant. I thank
them both from the bottom of my heart for their generosity.
I am grateful to Tarini for sharing with me the memories of
her loving parents, and to Geetika Lid-der for sharing the
memories of her late husband, the caring Brig. Lakhbinder
Singh Lidder, which helped me reconstruct that last day of their
lives. To both of them, I apologize for making them relive the
pain.
I thank all of Gen. Rawat’s friends, family and comrades who
agreed to be interviewed for this book (the number crossed
twenty) and gave me insights into di erent phases of his life,
sharing with me those heart-warming anecdotes that made
him come alive as a person for me. I would also like to thank Col
Jaishankar Singh, Commanding O cer, 5/11 Gorkha Ri es, and
Lt Col Sachin Kamboj, Second-in-Comman4d, for generously
sharing old photographs of Gen. Rawat from their regimental
albums, many of which you see in this book.
I am grateful to my St John’s College, Agra, classmate Lt Col
Anupam Gaur, from the Army Aviation Corps, who not only
found me the pilot who had taken Gen. Rawat on the Dimapur
chopper ight that had crashed—in which all on board had a
miraculous escape—but also helped me reconstruct the two
chopper ights mentioned in the book, particularly the
unfortunate one from Sulur, which happened to be Gen. Rawat’s
last.
I am grateful to my Tamilian friend, the Bangalore-based
Anitha Kumar, who interviewed the
Tamil-speaking Nazar (the Coimbatore-based eyewitness of
the Sulur chopper crash) and transcribed the interview in
English for me; and to Lt Col Raju Pradhan, for writing the
Nepali lines for me. And also to Palash Mankodi—the young,
aspiring army o cer, fellow Instagrammer friend and mixed
marshal arts (MMA) expert—who helped me put together the
boxing jargon for Gentleman Cadet Bipin Rawat’s boxing scene.
I would like to thank Reshma Negi, rst cousin of Gen. Rawat,
and Kulbhushan Negi, her husband, for passionately insisting
that I take up this biography in the months when I had started
working on it but had not yet signed the Penguin contract, since
I was unsure if I would be able to do justice to it.
In the end, I would like to thank my Penguin Random House
editor Gurveen Chadha, for being my pillar of support; the
brilliant Vineet Gill, for editing the book; Penguin design head,
Ahlawat Gunjan, for coming up with the stunning concept for
the cover and the back page (Gorkha hat representing the
General’s going away); and to Amit Srivastava, artist par
excellence who has so beautifully managed to capture the spirit
of the late General in the portrait you see on the cover. It was a
dream team to work with, and I consider it a privilege to have
had this opportunity.
Lastly, I am grateful to my brother, Col Sameer Bisht, for
always reading every single chapter of every single book I have
written, and for uncomplainingly coming back with feedback
and suggestions, despite his busy schedule. He reposes faith in
meas my late father once did, and that means more to me than
anything else. And yes, of course, I am glad to have as my
forever bouncing board my closest friend, my husband Col
Manoj Rawat, who had to listen to every story of the General’s
life that touched me, before I sat down to write. Then, of course,
Hukum, whom I thank for just being there and wagging his big
tail for me from time to time. He won’t be reading this and
would probably prefer a bone.
Photographs
Gen. Bipin Rawat(“Bunny”) was chubby
smiling baby whom everyone adored.
When his parents took him to the
village for the first time, the household
helps would fight over who would hold
him first.
 Bunny was always a caring elder
brother to his sibling Chhotu(later Col
Vijay Rawat), who was always up to
some mischief.
All dressed up for a fancy-dress party.
Later in life, he hardly cared about
clothes, leaving the choice to his
buddies or his wife.
 Wearing the Gurkha topi and khukri
many years before he actually went to
join 5/11 Gorkha Rifles as a young
Lieutenant.
 The quiet soft-spoken Gentlemen
Cadet Bipin Rawat at the Indian Miliary
Academy, Dehradun
The Gentleman Cadet in his winter
patrol
Indian Miltary Academy, passing-out
ceremony. The quiet, sentient
Gentleman Cadet whom nobody knew
passed out as Sword of Honour.
At the IMA passing-out Flanked by his
maternal uncle, then Maj. Satpal
Parmar, whom he remained very close
to all his life; and his grandfather’s
younger brother, Thakur Kishan Singh,
at whose Dehradun house Bipin spent
most of his vacations
 At his passing out, flanked by the
proud ladies of the family and his
maternal uncle, then Maj. Satpal
Parmar. His mother stands between
him Maj. Parmar

In the hot seat

One tiger handing over the rein to the
next: (Col Rakesh Sharma hands over
command of 5/11 GR to Col Bipin
Rawat.
 The unit paditji doing tika after
Dussehra puja at Binnaguri in 1999
while then Subhedar Kumar Pradhan
looks on.
Relieving the CO and SM Sahab bond:
With retired Subhedar Major Kumar
Pradhan ( who was SM of 5/11 Gorkha
Rifles during his command), at his
residence after he took over as COAS.
The Shastra puja (arms worship, part
of the nine-day Dussehra
celebrations) at Binnaguri in 1998,
when he was commanding 5/11 GR.
Tiger on the prowl: Visiting the Alfa
Company post at Dichu, Arunachal
Pradesh.

With the then governor of Arunachal

Pradesh
Bipin and Madhulika got married in a
simple ceremony
Farewell to the bachelor days: While he
was siting for pheras his shoes got
stole,.

The newly-wed caught in a candid

shot
Photogenic smiles marking the
beginning of a beautiful journey
together.
A warm send-off from the regiment
after relinquishing command. He was
adored by his men.
He’s a jolly good fellow, and so say all
of us: End of tenure as Commanding
Officer.
 On a visit to 5/11 Gorkha Rifles in
Lucknow. He always has a warm
handshake and a pleasant greeting for
all his soldiers and officers.
Though he shot up like a meteor, Gen.
Rawat remained deeply attached to
his unit. Visiting 5/11 GR, as Brigadier, in
Jammu and Kashmir

In the colourful Gorkhali topi his troops

loved to see him in. He spoke fluent
Gorkhali too.
 He was happiest with his troops and
could do the Nepali dance jhamre as
well as the youngest soldier.

The higher he rose in his rank, the more

grounded he became: Happy with the
Gorkha troops.
 With his IMA course-mate Maj. Gen.
Arjun Muthanna in Kodagu on 4th
November 2017, where Gen. Rawat
unveiled the statues of tow iconic
soldiers of the district: Filed Marshal
K.M. Cariappa and Gen. K.S. Thimayya.
 Gen. Rawat was known for his firm
handshake, and he looked deep into
people’s eyes. He seldom wore dark
glasses. Visiting 5/11 GR at Umroi Cantt
during his Corps Commander days.

As Corps Commander in Dimapur,

cutting a handsome figure in his Six
Bravo ( summer mess attire), with the
charming Madhulika.
In locally woven Naga jacket as Corps
Commander.
The baton passes on: Gen. Bipin Rawat
took over as the Indian Army’s twenty-
sixth Chief of the Army Staff from
General Dalbir Singh Suhag, PVSM,
UYSM, AVSM, VSM, ADC, on 31st
December 2015.(Left to right) Namita
Suhag, Gen. Suhag, Gen. Rawat,
Madhulika Rawat.
Chief of Army Staff and the first lady
with Param Vir Chakra awardee
Comapny Quartermaster Havildar
Abdul Hamid’s wife, Rasoolan Bibi.
As COAS on a visit to St. Petersburg,
Russia
As COAS on a visit to Bhutan.
A proud day for the family, December
1982. Then Capt. Bipin Rawat and his
parents came to Dehradun for the
passing-out of parafe of 2Lt Vijay
Rawat. (Left to right): the Capt. Bipin
Rawat, Gen Laxman Singh Rawat, 2Lt
Vijay Rawat and Sushila Rawat.
The three siblings with their respective
partners, at a family get-together at
Kiran’s Delhi house. Gen. Bipin Rawat
was Army Commander at the time.
(Left to right) Ge. Bipin Rawat,
Madhulika, Vikram Singh(brother-in-
law), Kiran (siste), Col Vijay
Rawat(brother) and Sanyogita (sister-
in-law).

Gen. Rawat ran into his class teacher

Mrs. Gunmala Singh from St. Edward’s
School, Shimla, at a party and
recognized her right away.
 Diplomatic evening overseas:
Madhulika and Gen. Rawaat with
Geetika and Brig. Lidder in Kazakhstan,
at a roayl banquet held in their honour
in August 2017.
 A Europe trip: The Rawats and the
Lidders in Prague, November 2021.
Happy and smiling, unmindful of the
terrible tragedy that was to befall.
 Gen Rawat with his National Defence
Academy course-mate Lt Gen Subrata
Saha. The two of them had known
each other since they were seventeen-
year-olds.
 With Gen. Naravane in Panagarh for
Corps War Game.

Pinning the badge: ‘Impress me with

work, not gifts,’ Gen. Rawat would often
say. Gen Naravane says the only gift
he ever gave Gen. Rawat was a Naga
spear broach that he pinned on his
jacket in Kohima during a visit in 2014.
Lt Gen. Lakshman Singh Rawat flanked
by Gen. Bipin Rawat, Col Satpal Parmar
and Brig. Shivender Singh at L.S
Rawat’s flat in Noida.
‘Hum sab bhi fauj mein jayenge. It will
be a tribute to Mausaji.’ a teenaged
Bipin had told his cousin Shivender
when Shivender’s father died in the 1971
war. Here they stand in their unifor
many years later, in Pir Ki Gali, Kashmir
where Gen. Rawat had gone to visit his
cousin.

He was affectionate father to his

daughters. Tarini(left), the younger
one, and Kritika, the older one.
 The Rawats at their elder daughter
Kritika’s wedding reception in Mumbai.
The baton passes on to the twenty-
seventh Chief of the Army Staff, Gen.
Manoj Mukund Naravane.
 The baton changes hands. Gen
Naravane says Gen. Rawat groomed
him for the job without saying a single
word to him.

The author in conversation with Gen.

Rawat when she visited his office to gift
him a copy of her book Kargil.
Tarini remembering her parents with a
smile at an interview with the author at
Tarini house in Delhi
 The Chief of the Army Staff meeting
the long-haired Saransh and assuring
him that it was perfectly all right to
choose a career option other than the
army.
 The President and supreme
commander of the Indian armed
forces, Ram Nath Kovind, conferring
the PVSM on Gen. Bipin Rawat.
 A rare photograph of India’s top
military men, the tri-service Chiefs,
accompanied by the first ladies.

The tri-service Chiefs and first ladies in

casual attire.
This last picture of the Rawats, taken
on 8th December 2021, with Sub. Maj.
Bhishma Shreshta of 5/11 GR, just
before they left for the PAlam air base
to take a flight to Sulur.
 THE BEGINNING

Let the conversation begin…

Follow the Penguin Twitter.com@penguinbooks
Keep up-to-date with all our stories YouTube.com/penguinbooks
Pin ‘Penguin Books’ to your Pinterest
Like ‘Penguin Books’ on Facebook.com/penguinbooks
Find out more about the author and
discover more stories like this at Penguin.co.in
First published in Penguin Veer by Penguin Random House India 2023
Copyright © Rachna Bisht Rawat 2023
Photographs sourced from the regimental albums of the 5/11 Gorkha Rifles, and from
the personal albums of Gen. Bipin Rawat’s friends and family
All rights reserved
The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts are as
reported by her which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are
not in any way liable for the same. Nothing in this book is intended to cause offence or
hurt the sentiments of any individual, community, section of people, group or religion.
This digital edition published in 2023.
eISBN: 978-9-354-92972-4
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,
be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a
similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.penguin.co.in