Armed force officers at NDA pay homage to their course-mates, recall their valour

Indian Armed Forces officers of the 87th batch of National Defence Academy (NDA) paid homage to martyrs who were their course-mates here on Friday.

Colonel Aman Anand, Army spokesperson said, "Indian Armed Forces officers of the 87th batch of the NDA today paid homage to their fallen course-mates at the institution at Khadakwasla in Pune."

The fallen heroes include Lieutenant Puneet Dutt, Captain Amol Kalia, and ace pilots Wing Commander Prashant Joshi, Flight Lieutenant Sameer R Kagdi, Wing Commander TNB Singh, Flight Cadet Sunil Choudhary, and Flight Lieutenant V Krishnamurti, the Army spokesperson said.

"It's rare to match the sacrifices Indian Army officers have made in the line of duty but here in 87 NDA, the Air Warriors better us", Anand said.

During the event, the young cadets in attendance got the opportunity to hear the anecdotes from the 87th-course members about their NDA days including details about eight of their course mates who laid down lives in the line of duty.

The 87th NDA course produced legendary Army officers like Puneet Nath Dutt and Amol Kalia who continue to be the guiding beacons to coming generations.

Other heroes of this batch include Prashant Joshi, who commanded the first flight of C130 and went down in one of the most spoken about incidents involving this state-of-the-art aircraft.

Joe, as was fondly called by buddies, is regarded among the best. Kagdi, a Cheetah pilot from the course, was taking a mission to the Daulet Beg Oldi and went down in an extremely trying situation which is termed as 'material failure' in technical terms.

Even after being grievously injured, Kagdi refused to be evacuated in the best of the military traditions.

The contributions of Kagdi and Joe to their service and future generations are so big that designs and policies were revisited by the OEMs (both foreign and Indian) and changes made.