Khalubar: Lieutenant Manoj Kumar Pandey’s Final Charge

The Batalik sub-sector was the most remote and least accessible of the Kargil battlegrounds — a wilderness of knife-edge ridges where the intrusion had pushed deepest and where the fighting was correspondingly hard. Khalubar Ridge was its key.

The night assault

On the night of 2–3 July 1999, 1/11 Gorkha Rifles assaulted Khalubar. The advance of the leading platoon was held up by a series of enemy bunkers commanding the only approach. Lieutenant Manoj Kumar Pandey, leading from the front, closed with the positions one after another.

He cleared four bunkers in succession. He was wounded clearing the third and fourth, and continued. The ridge was taken; Pandey did not survive the action.

The highest honour

Lieutenant Manoj Kumar Pandey was awarded the Param Vir Chakra posthumously — one of four conferred for Operation Vijay. His name is among those inscribed on the Roll of Honour at Dras, and the capture of Khalubar opened the way to clearing the Batalik heights.