The Life And Times Of Capt. Saurabh Kalia - Revealed In A Conversation With His Family

A young Saurabh was sitting in the open courtyard at his home in the small town of Palampur. It was a summer morning, and a pleasant breeze was blowing in this town in the hills. His father walked outside. 'Saurabh, Breakfast is ready,' he said, but Saurabh was lost in thought. Noticing this, his father stopped, walked up to him gently, kept a hand on his shoulder and inquired, 'Where are you lost, beta?'.

Saurabh looked up to his dad and smiled, "Dad, this oak tree in our garden, it is so tall and surrounded by these tiny shrubs. Even though they all get the same sun and have the same soil to grow in. I was wondering how we humans are the same, we all get 24 hours, but some of us rise high and some don't"

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Little did anyone know just how high this shy, thoughtful, caring kid would rise.

About ten years later, Saurabh, now Lt Saurabh Kalia, found himself defending his nation in one of the most dangerous places on this planet, the India Pakistan border in Kashmir. And when the time came, he would defend India by making the highest sacrifice.

Saurabh Kalia was a responsible brother, a loving child, and a focused student. "He was also an amazing cook" points out his younger brother Vaibhav Kalia. "He was the one who cooked food if ever our Mother was out of town," he remembers with a smile.

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"Saurabh spoke very little, he never indulged in pointless chatter," says his father Dr N.K. Kalia, and then goes on to talk about the time when Saurabh had just finished his training and had been assigned to the 4 Jat regiment.

During his orientation at the regiment centre, Saurabh, like all other new officers, had to stand up and address the whole crowd. While most officers gave five-ten minute long speeches, Saurabh just made one statement and sat down. He said, "Today, I am proud that I have joined 4 Jat regiment, a day will come when this unit will be proud of me".

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Within a few months, Capt. Saurabh Kalia had sacrificed his life for the country, and had made not just his unit, but the entire nation proud.

He was the first Indian army officer to observe and report large-scale intrusion of Pakistani Army and foreign mercenaries on the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC) at Kargil.

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On 15 May 1999, Lt Saurabh Kalia and five other soldiers Sepoys Arjun Ram, Bhanwar Lal Bagaria, Bhika Ram, Moola Ram and Naresh Singh of the 4 Jat Regiment had gone for a routine patrol in the rugged, treeless Ladakh mountains. After continuous crossfire with Pakistan armed forces, he and his troops ran out of ammunition. They were finally encircled by a platoon of Pakistani rangers and captured alive before Indian reinforcements could reach them.

Lt Saurabh Kalia and his men were in captivity for over twenty two days and subjected to torture. Post-mortem examinations revealed that the Pakistanis had tortured their prisoners by burning their bodies with cigarettes, piercing their ear-drums with hot rods, puncturing their eyes before removing them, breaking most of their teeth and bones, fracturing their skulls, cutting their lips, chopping off limbs and private organs of the soldiers, and finally shooting them dead, as evidenced by bullet wounds to the temple.

"He had told me to take care of our mother and father when he was leaving for Kashmir," says his younger brother, "And that's one of the reasons why I never left this town".

Lt Saurabh Kalia's father has been fighting for his son and the other soldiers deaths and torture to be declared as a war crime by the UN for the past seventeen years. After all these years, his eyes still light up when he talks about Capt. Saurabh. He talks about the time he had met the Indian Army Chief after the war, "After the war, the army chief visited us and he told us, Capt. Saurabh Kalia's sacrifice had woken up a sleeping nation".