archive: With a prayer on their lips, they laid the enemy soldiers to
With a prayer on their lips, they laid the enemy soldiers to
Vikram Jit Singh
The Indian Express
July 11, 1999
Title: With a prayer on their lips, they laid the enemy soldiers to
rest
Author: Vikram Jit Singh
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: July 11, 1999
POINT 4812, JULY 11: If killing the enemy is the soldier's job in war,
what's burying the enemy? The answer came at a solemn ceremony, to the
dirge of shells and gunfire, when Indian troops buried 13 Pakistani
soldiers at Point 4812 in the Batalik sub-sector.
There was both irony and tragedy in this act of grace under fire. The
same pickaxes and shovels which the Pak soldiers used to build their
bunkers were now used by Indian troops to dig their graves. And the
same hands of the Indian soldiers, which until a few hours ago carried
AK rifles, were now raised in prayer. They may have been enemies out
to kill each other but when one side had won and the other had died,
it wasn't so black and white.
Letters recovered from the intruders' bodies told stories of love and
loss. A letter from a wife to her husband about their seven-month-old
baby; from a father to his son that he better watch out, Indian forces
were closing in on Pak positions. ``You must take care, beta,'' the
father wrote.
For a briefmoment, it didn't seem to matter that it was a Pakistani
father or a Pakistani wife. And so at a height of 15,500 feet on the
Kharbular Ridge, with the chill wind blowing in their faces, 60
soldiers of the 12 Jammu & Kashmir Light Infantry dug the graves,
ringed them with bullet-marked stones, before lowering the bodies one
by one. The bodies, including those of Captain Qamar and Subedar
Mirza, were found under a pile of stones, hastily buried by the
fleeing enemy. ``We could see their legs and arms sticking out from
underneath the stones when we finally captured Point 4812 after a
two-day battle. We could not lug the bodies down and keeping in mind
the sentiments of the Muslim troops of our battalion, we decided to
re-bury the enemy's bodies,'' said the 12 JAKLI's post commander of
Point 4812.
It took Havildar Mohammad Younis's team of seven men six hours to
build each of the 13 graves. ``The ground was too hard to dig so we
built an enclosure of stones and slipped the bodies into the
intruders' sleepingbags,'' said Lance Naik Sohrawardy, who acted as
the maulvi for the Jinazaah (burial service).
And when the grave was covered, its surface littered with empty
machine guns, AK rifle cases and stray tufts of grass, 60 Indian
soldiers of the 12 JAKLI gathered in prayer. Hav Younis, Hav Sonullah
Khan, Rifleman Abdul Qadir, Rifleman Abdul Aziz, Rifleman Mohammad
Munchhi and Rifleman Abdul Qayoom lowered their heads in respect while
Lance Naik Sohrawardy offered the Namaaz-e-Jinazaah. The first words
were the Tadbir: Allah-u-Akbar (God is the Greatest). ``During the
battle, this was the enemy's war cry,'' said Younis. ``Now we are
saying Allah-u-Akbar.'' Thrice, Lance Naik said the words and all
three times, the 60 soldiers stood silently, their head bowed, their
hands raised in prayer. And then the last salaam to the departed soul
before Indian hands used Pakistani shovels to dig the earth, cover the
grave.Within minutes, however, it was all over. The fleeting silence
gone, it was back to the sound of shellscoming from the Muntho Dalo
area, the machine guns at Kukarthang. The battle for Batalik was won.
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