4 / 3 GORKHA RIFLES NEWS
(JANUARY 2002)
By 2001, Lt. Nawang Kapadia’s regiment, 4th battalion of the 3rd Gorkha Rifles had a new Commanding Officer, Lt. Col. P.P. Singh. He telephoned us on 1st December, 2001 from the Military Hospital in Srinagar. “We have done it Sir, we were lucky enough to have killed the remaining two terrorists which were involved in the encounter when Lt. Nawang Kapadia was killed. God has given the unit its revenge.” He informed us with a pride in his voice. The 4 / 3rd GR, which was technically in peace station in Almora, volunteered and went back to the valley and were posted at Gulmarg.
Nawang was killed in the encounter near Kupwara, where according to information, 5 terrorists were involved. 2 of them were killed instantly in the same encounter. After almost a year, when they had definite information that these terrorists were in the Gulmarg area the officers and jawans chased them. In a very brave encounter, in spite of deep snow and cold weather, they eliminated 2 terrorists, one of them being man called Bilal who was the dreaded terrorist of the area.
In the encounter, the Commanding Officer, Lt. Col. P. P. Singh received injuries on his jaws and was lucky to save his eyes from injury. Capt. Abhay Sinh, who was the senior of Nawang, received a blast of plastic explosives embedded in his body. Three other jawans were injured, but luckily, there were no other casualties on our side. The regiment was very proud to have avenged the death of their officer and NCO Lance/Naik Chitra Bahadur that day. A small advertisements was inserted by them, even in the Bombay newspapers, paying tribute to Lt. Nawang Kapadia.
We all in Bombay, were deeply touched at this gesture, dedication and commitment of the regiment to look after ijjat their officer. This is the great stuff the Indian Army is made of.
God does indeed work in mysterious ways, that these terrorist who had killed Lt. Nawang were destined to die by the hands of the same unit which he called his family
