1987 Siachen hero Brigadier Varinder Singh passws away | Brigadier Varinder Singh's biography
The Indian military on Saturday bade farewell to the man who led one of its most daunting operations in recent memory, at a snow peak over 21,000 feet high and across frozen bodies of his fallen comrades, to evict enemy soldiers occupying a post named after the founder of their nation.
Brigadier Varinder Singh, then a young Major, led the small assault team of 8 Jammu & Kashmir Light Infantry that captured the Quaid Post in Siachen glacier on June 26, 1987, after weeks of laborious, logistically challenging operation and several casualties.
Singh (57) collapsed on Friday while playing basketball, and passed away a few hours later. He is survived by his wife Anita, a daughter and a son. Once Singh’s team captured it, Quaid Post was renamed Bana Top, after Subedar Bana Singh, a member of Singh’s assault team, who was awarded Param Vir Chakra, the highest gallantry award for the operation. Maj Singh, who was wounded in the operation, was awarded Vir Chakra.
“We had no strength to celebrate... Ultimately, sheer doggedness wins. If we had once hesitated, Quaid would still be with Pakistan,” Singh told a defence blog recently.
The 1987 operation, many would argue, was the peak of Indo-Pak hostilities in some sense, stretching their hatred to the highest peak in a forlorn glacier that was beyond the gaze of all invading armies and expanding empires through centuries.
The Indian military on Saturday bade farewell to the man who led one of its most daunting operations in recent memory, at a snow peak over 21,000 feet high and across frozen bodies of his fallen comrades, to evict enemy soldiers occupying a post named after the founder of their nation.
Brigadier Varinder Singh, then a young Major, led the small assault team of 8 Jammu & Kashmir Light Infantry that captured the Quaid Post in Siachen glacier on June 26, 1987, after weeks of laborious, logistically challenging operation and several casualties.
Singh (57) collapsed on Friday while playing basketball, and passed away a few hours later. He is survived by his wife Anita, a daughter and a son. Once Singh’s team captured it, Quaid Post was renamed Bana Top, after Subedar Bana Singh, a member of Singh’s assault team, who was awarded Param Vir Chakra, the highest gallantry award for the operation. Maj Singh, who was wounded in the operation, was awarded Vir Chakra.
“We had no strength to celebrate... Ultimately, sheer doggedness wins. If we had once hesitated, Quaid would still be with Pakistan,” Singh told a defence blog recently.
The 1987 operation, many would argue, was the peak of Indo-Pak hostilities in some sense, stretching their hatred to the highest peak in a forlorn glacier that was beyond the gaze of all invading armies and expanding empires through centuries.
