On 28 February 1966, the Treasury in Aizawl was looted by militants of the Mizo National Front, which morphed from the Mizo National Famine Front and sought a separate Mizo nation. The MNF had surrounded the headquarters of 1st Assam Rifles in Aizawl as well as the outposts in Champai, Darngawn, Dimagiri, Lungleh, Vapahi, and a few other places across the hill district.
On the afternoon of 2 March 1966, 110 Helicopter Unit based in Tezpur was tasked to send a detachment of Mi 4 helicopters to Kumbhirgram for operations in Mizo hills. As there was no Air Force unit in Kumbhirgram, the detachment of six helicopters was accommodated with the Army’s 18 Panjab battalion based just outside the civil aerodrome. A seventh helicopter fetched up a day later.
Simultaneously, 18 and 19 Assam Rifles were moved from Dimapur to Silchar and Army columns of 8 Sikh, 2/11 GR, 5 Para, and 3 Bihar were moved by road towards Aizawl. These columns had to clear obstacles and ambushes on the solitary road from Silchar to Aizawl, especially around Kolasib, and their movement was therefore understandably slow and time–consuming.
At Kumbhirgram, the helicopters were readied to airlift troops of 18 and 19 AR to the Assam Rifles parade ground in Aizawl. As the helicopters approached the improvised helipad, they were fired upon by the MNF, which had occupied the area around the reservoir on the northern part of Aizawl, as well as areas inside the town, overlooking the AR ground. Majors Sidhu and Balwant Singh, who were then at the AR HQ in Aizawl, fired red vary light cartridges indicating that the ground was not safe for landing. The helicopters aborted the landings and returned to Kumbhirgram. In his follow–up message to the Army at Kumbhirgram, Maj Sidhu said that the firing by the Mizos was too intense for the helicopters to have attempted safe landings. As it is, one helicopter was hit on the tail rotor connecting rod and the crew and troops were fortunate that the tail rotor did not fail.
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Breaking the Mizo siege
Eastern Army Commander Lt Gen Manekshaw and the AOC in C EAC, Air Vice Marshal Y Malse, then undertook a recce of the Aizawl area in a Caribou aircraft. The aircraft returned riddled with bullets. Seeing that there was no immediate way to reduce the possibility of 1 Assam Rifles HQ being overrun by the Mizo hostiles, it was decided to attempt helicopter landings in Aizawl under suppressive fire from Toofani aircraft of 29 Sqn, which too had arrived on detachment from Tezpur.
Accordingly, on 5 March, the helicopters with their contingent of Assam Rifles personnel took off for Aizawl, with the Toofanis following about an hour later. The two formations rendezvoused in the Turial valley, East of Aizawl. As the helicopters approached for landing, the fighter escort strafed the hillside, forcing the hostiles to keep their heads down or better still, vacate the area. It was in this manner that the siege of the Mizo hostiles around the Assam Rifles Battalion HQ was broken. Additional helicopter sorties were then undertaken to bolster the strength of the Assam Rifles in and around Aizawl.
Soon after, the army columns, having cleared the road blocks and ambushes on the road from Silchar, also started fetching up at Aizawl. 5 Para, under Lt Col Mathew Thomas, was stationed in Aizawl as a sort of quick reaction force. 2/11 GR, under Lt Col Onkar Dixit, was sent to Champai; and 8 Sikh, under Lt Col Avtar Singh, was stationed at Seiling. 3 Bihar moved further South towards Lungleh, and thereafter towards Demagiri, on the East Pakistan border. Once the situation in Aizawl had stabilised, elements of 18 and 19 AR, which had been flown into Aizawl, also moved out to their new locations, initially on the Aizawl Lungleh axis. These units became part of 61 Mountain Brigade under Brig Rustom Zal Kabraji. I have read reports of the BSF manning some of the posts in Southern Mizo hills. I am not too certain that the BSF was there when the initial trouble broke out. They did come later and were in the Chawngte, Vaseitlong, Parva area, as well as in Demagiri. The BSF was only raised in December 1965, and it is unlikely that they had moved into the Lushai Hills to staff so many posts in three months, even before the MNF took to arms.
Kumbhirgram too was being transformed from a civil airstrip used by a daily IAC Dakota flight operating on the Cal-Agartala-Kumbhirgram-Imphal route to a bee hive of Air Force activity. Earlier, a DC 3 of Kalinga Airlines would carry out drop sorties for the civil population of the Lushai Hills. Now the runway was crowded with MI 4 helicopters, Toofani and Vampire aircraft as well as many DC 3 and Caribou aircraft on either side of the runway. Were an aircraft to swing off the runway, it would have damaged many others too. The DC 3 detachment from Jorhat was to air maintain the army and para military forces being inducted into the area. This new AF hub was commanded by Gp Capt NK Lalkaka. One would hesitate to call it an airfield as only the runway was viable for operations. The rest of the airfield, a WWII base, was under thick foliage. It was much later that the foliage was cleared and the area made to resemble an operational base. Until then, the aerodrome cafeteria was used as a crew room. Sindhi, the aerodrome officer, was kind enough not to raise too many objections.
Coming back to the strike sorties, besides the ones at Aizawl, some were flown towards Demagiri, Vaphai, and Sangau, where the hostiles were threatening to run over the posts. I recall overhearing the concern with regard to the direction of attack over Demagiri, as the post was right on the river bank, which formed the international border with East Pakistan. However, once the attacks materialised over these few posts, the Mizos went into the jungles and the Toofani detachment returned to its base shortly thereafter. That detachment may have been in Kumbhirgram for a little over a week.
Another strike I recollect is the one at Darngawn, which was a village on the road to Champai, where too the small AR post was under threat of being overrun by the Mizos. Toofanis from Kumbhirgram and Hunters from Jorhat carried out strikes to ease the pressure there.
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No indiscriminate bombing
Why, one may ask, do I deem it necessary to jot down events that happened nearly 60 years go? It’s because of a lot of incorrect information about indiscriminate bombing by the IAF during the early stages of the Mizo uprising that is being bandied about in the media, especially social media. Fighter sorties were only undertaken to assist the Assam Rifles post in preventing the MNF cadres from overrunning the post. Once the situation stabilised, the fighters returned to their parent base. No transport aircraft or helicopter was deployed in an offensive role.
There has been nonsensical talk of how two former IAF pilots, Suresh Kalmadi and Rajesh Pilot, were inducted into a political party solely because of them having been selected by the leader of the party to carry out the attacks.
Rajesh Prasad, who was christened Rajesh Pilot in 1980, was a Flight Cadet in an IAF training institution at the time. He was commissioned as a transport pilot in October 1966, seven months after the Mizo operations started. He left the IAF in 1980 when he decided to enter politics and then came to be known as Rajesh Pilot because of his AF background. Suresh Kalmadi, commissioned in December 1964, was also a transport pilot and posted to C 119 Sqn in Agra at the time. So much for the talk of indiscriminate bombing by these two Air Force officers, and the political twist being given to a situation which was fairly precarious, given the close proximity of the state to borders that were inimical to India’s interest to say the least.
Air Vice Marshal Harpal Singh Ahluwalia (retd) YSM VM was commissioned in the helicopter stream in 1965, and has operated with units in the Northeast, Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Sri Lanka. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)