#KargilVijayDiwas: Captain Vikram Batra's father recalls his son's exemplary feat
Kargil war hero Captain Vikram Batra's father, GL Batra, recalled his son's bravery and patriotism and said he felt proud to be the father of a Param Vir Chakra recipient. "Though we miss him every moment, we feel he is with us spiritually. The departure of a noble son is painful, but to bring forth such a son is also great luck," he said.
Captain Vikram died fighting Pakistanis in the Kargil war (1999) at the age of 24. He was given the Param Vir Chakra posthumously. Due to his exemplary feat, Captain Batra was conferred titles such as 'Tiger of Drass' and the 'Lion of Kargil'.
Captain Batra's most difficult mission was the capture of the crucial peak- Point 4875. But even after that, the enemy continued to fire from a position north of the point. Reinforcements were immediately brought up. Despite having high fever and fatigue, Captain Batra volunteered to head a party to the battlefront. Motivated by his offer, many soldiers volunteered to accompany him, his father recalls.
"From eyewitnesses, I heard that somewhere, still at the task, suddenly the signs of fatigue vanished from Vikram's face. He became a man fired by a mission," his father writes in a revised edition of Harinder Baweja's book "A Soldier's Diary: Kargil, The Inside Story".
On 7 July, the mission was almost over, when Captain Batra ran out of his bunker to rescue another officer, Lt Naveen Anaberu, whose legs had been severely injured in an explosion. "As Vikram was dragging Naveen towards cover, the latter pleaded with Vikram to let him continue the fight. Just then a bullet pierced through Vikram's chest," writes his father.
His father further goes on to tell how enraged by his death, the soldiers of the 13 JAK Rifles pursued the enemy. "Unnerved by the fury of the attack, the Pakistanis fell back. The Indian soldiers gained the upper hand. Captain Batra's sacrifice paved the way for the success of our troops and the consolidation of the Indian hold on Point 4875," he says.
The martyr's father says that when one of Batra's friends had told him to be careful since the war had begun, he had replied, "Don't worry. I will either come back after raising the Indian flag in victory or return wrapped in it."
Captain Batra's father and mother visited Drass in Kargil in 2002. "The feeling of pride, as if we were visiting our son as a commanding officer, was spiraling through our veins," he says. Due to their age, they could not visit Point 4875, which was 17,500ft above sea-level. However, the corps-commander gifted them two glasses filled with the soil of Point 4876 and Tololing.
