 "Veenu Sandhu")
 "A Mig-27ML being armed for a mission during the Kargil War in 1999")
A Mig-27ML being armed for a mission during the Kargil War in 1999 (PHOTO: MINISTRY OF DEFENCE)
In February 1999, nine months after India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests, a goodwill gesture initiated by India brought hope of peace on the western front. Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited Pakistan.
It was a historic visit, the first by an Indian prime minister in 10 years. He travelled on February 20 via the inaugural Delhi-Lahore bus service, Sada-e-Sarhad (“call of the frontier”), and was greeted at Wagah border by the then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
The next day, on February 21, the premiers signed the Lahore Declaration, “embodying their shared vision of peace and stability between their countries”, as the joint statement read. At the joint press conference in Lahore, Sharif said: “I would like a Pakistan-India relationship that is free of tensions and based on mutual trust and confidence.” Less than three months later, these words would ring hollow.
As spring turned to summer, and snow on the jagged peaks of Kargil, Ladakh, began to melt, Indian troops resumed patrolling in the high-altitude Kaksar sector along the Line of Control to check for possible intrusion. Among them was a newly commissioned officer, 22-year-old Lieutenant (later ranked Captain) Saurabh Kalia from Palampur, Himachal Pradesh. On May 15, his patrol, which included five other soldiers, was ambushed by a Pakistani platoon, and they were taken captive. The Pakistani Army would hand over their bodies to India 25 days later, on June 9. The postmortem revealed that the soldiers were brutally tortured — their eardrums pierced with hot rods, eyes punctured and removed, limbs and genitals amputated — before they were shot in the head.
The days following the capture of Kalia’s patrol exposed the scale of the incursion. The infiltrators had occupied 130-200 square kilometres, demanding immediate action. It would be a difficult war. Pakistani troops had a locational advantage. From the peaks of the Greater Himalayas, the Srinagar-Leh Highway, which passes through Kargil and was then the main supply route for military movement and reinforcements, was directly in their line of fire. They could easily sever this lifeline.
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The responsibility of winning the war for India fell on young soldiers, many of them in their 20s. And win they did. More than 500 of them died fighting on those near-vertical slopes. One of them was Captain Vikram Batra, also from Palampur. With barely one-and-a-half years of service, the 24-year-old, codenamed Sher Shah, would become the legend of the Kargil war. His pivotal role in capturing key features, Point 5140 and Point 4875, would trigger subsequent successes for India. And his triumphant words, “Yeh dil mange more! (The heart wants more!)”, which television news channels beamed from ground zero, would turn a brand’s advertising slogan into a war cry. He was awarded the Param Vir Chakra posthumously.
The Indian Air Force, which provided critical air support to the army, dropped bombs painted with “Yeh dil mange more!” on Pakistani intruders. On others, they painted a heart and arrow with the message, “From Raveena Tandon to Nawaz Sharif”, cocking a snook at the Pakistani premier who had expressed his admiration for the Bollywood actor.
On July 26, Pakistani forces finally stood down.
Written By
Veenu Sandhu
Veenu Sandhu is senior associate editor at Business Standard. Based in New Delhi, she has been a journalist since 1996, and has worked in some of India's leading newsrooms across print, digital and television media, including NDTV 24x7, Hindustan Times and The Indian Express. At Business Standard, she writes, commissions, edits and gives direction to special, in-depth articles for the newspaper and the digital platform across beats and sectors. She also hosts video shows for Business Standard. Before this, she edited BS Weekend. She is a 2017-18 batch Chevening South Asia Journalism fellow.
 "Veenu Sandhu")
First Published: Mar 10 2026 | 5:15 AM IST
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