One of the most heartbreaking moments in Oni Sen’s Netflix India period war drama Operation Safed Sagar is when Siddharth’s character Ajay Ahuja is killed by the Pakistani army after his parachute drifts across the Line of Control during the 1999 Kargil War. “Jai Hind,” he utters his famous last words as he’s shot in the head after days of torture.
BS Dhanoa was ‘shocked’ by Ajay Ahuja’s death
In the show, as soon as the news of Ajay crossing the LoC comes in, his longtime friend and colleague, BS Dhanoa aka Tony (Jimmy Shergill), rushes to his rescue, only to be stopped by his superior (Adil Hussain), who tells him that it’s a diplomatic issue now and Tony can’t risk his own life or India’s bargaining chances by crossing the LoC.
Dhanoa, the real-life Indian Air Force officer who was the Commanding Chief of Golden Arrows back then, recently confessed that he was “very sure” Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja would return from Pakistan. “The shock came to me when the air headquarters told me that Nachiketa is a prisoner of war, and Ahuja has been killed,” Dhanoa told The Indian Express.
Flight Lieutenant Kambapati Nachiketa’s jet suffered an engine failure, following which he was captured by the Pakistani army as a Prisoner of War. Ajay Ahuja followed him in order to locate and rescue him, only for his jet to be gunned down by the Pakistani army, who eventually captured, tortured, and killed him. Nachiketa was released and returned to India after Ahuja’s death.
“It came as a shock to all of us because he’d ejected safely. Our troops were there where the Indus crossed the PoK (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir). That’s why we were sure he was alive. That he’d be killed in captivity as a PoW was not expected,” confessed Dhanoa. He also refused to believe a Pakistani officer’s claim that Ahuja shot himself.
While doing a course in the US in 2000, when a Pakistani officer told Dhanoa that Ahuja killed himself, he argued that while the first gunshot wound on Ahuja’s body was in the throat — implying the possibility that he shot himself — the second one is from the nipple to the bottom, which implies that somebody shot him from the top, while he was sitting on his haunches. “That second injury can’t be explained, plus the signs of torture,” said Dhanoa.
He also claimed while Nachiketa was “lucky enough” to fall among the Pakistani troops, Ahuja fell among the “irregulars”. “If the troops capture you, everybody thrashes you. Let me be very frank! You’ve been bombing them,” said Dhanoa, laughing, blaming it on the “initial fury”. But the troops know very well that they’d need the PoW, so they don’t end up killing him. But the irregulars don’t follow any such rules, which is why “they did what they did”.
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But that doesn’t absolve the Pakistani army from its duty of protecting a PoW. “They have regulars fighting alongside. And Pakistan is a signatory of the Geneva Conventions, so they should meet its requirements,” said Dhanoa, referring to a set of international treaties that dictate the rules of how people must be treated during war.
‘We’ve carried a lot of coffins’
“As a nation state, they need to introspect. They do all this brutality, but does that make them win? The answer is no. They lose every time. It’s stupidity. Plus, they get a bad name all over the world,” said Dhanoa. Claiming that the IAF are “mentally tough”, they’ve even had to stomach the deaths of seven of 35 flying officers died in air accidents during peacetime, including two who died during training. “We’ve carried a lot of coffins,” said Dhanoa.
He blamed some of them on the “very bad design” of the HPT-32 aircraft. “Its crash survivability was worse than that of an Ambassador car. It had no ejection seat. So, when the engine used to get cut, you either had to bail out, or if you didn’t have the height, you had to crash-land,” said Dhanoa, adding that the new training aircraft “glide better than a glider” now.
Dhanoa also recalled his recent experience of flying a Rafale jet in France. “I had tears in my eyes after landing. I thought, what a difficult life I’ve lived,” he said. “I’ve flown all my life with my heart in my mouth! In a MiG-21, you always fly with your heart in your mouth,” he added, laughing. But he also deemed it “incorrect” to call MiG-21 a “flying coffin”.
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Operation Safed Sagar on Netflix India documents the lesser known contribution of the IAF, particularly the Golden Arrows, during Kargil War, helping India score a victory over Pakistan. Co-produced by Matchbox Shots and Feel Good Films, the show is co-written by Abhijeet Singh Parmar and Kushal Srivasatava, a former IAF officer himself. It also stars Dia Mirza, Amrita Bagchi, Abhay Verma, Mihir Ahuja, Taaruk Raina, Arnav Bhasin, Adil Hussain, Manu Rishi Chadha, and Vinay Pathak among others.
