‘I kept walking. I could not stop as it would mean the company also stopping for me.’
New Delhi: Engaged in a crossfire with Naxalites in Chhattisgarh’s besieged Sukma late last month, commando Prakash Chand of the CRPF’s Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) knew exactly what not to do when a bullet hit his right leg.
The words of seniors echoed in his ears: “One man’s fault can cause the entire company to vanish.” If he lost his morale and stopped firing, Chand knew, it would distract his fellow commandos. It’s a luxury soldiers in the heat of battle can ill afford.
So, the head constable kept going.
“I could not let my fellow commandos get distracted as attention is what keeps you alive in the battlefield,” 31-year-old Chand of 208 CoBRA told ThePrint two weeks after the 23 February encounter.
An operation, an ambush
It all began with an early morning search and destroy operation by three CoBRA companies, based at a camp in Palodi, following a tip-off about the presence of Naxalites in a village named Veerum.
As the companies approached the village around 11am, they found themselves ambushed. According to the CRPF, “around 200 Naxalites… bombarded the area with underbarrel grenade launchers and improvised mortars/directional mines”.
“We retaliated, and the cross-firing continued for half an hour,” Chand said, adding, “It was around 11.30am that the bullet hit me…”
In an official statement, the CRPF described how Chand, carrying a mortar, “kept on firing even after getting injured to support troops for the counter-ambush drill”.
Following the teams’ success in “breaking the ambush”, the CRPF said, Chand was administered first aid. Subsequently, the operations commander decided on a “tactical retreat” to the camp on account of the “intense pain” in Chand’s leg.
After the decision was made, Chand said, “I forgot the pain and started retreating. The whole team surrounded me and walked with me till we were out of sight of the Naxalites.”
“I kept walking. I could not stop as it would mean the company also stopping for me. The danger was imminent till we reached the camp,” he said.
The CoBRA dream
Chand, still recovering from the injury at a hospital in Raipur, had long thought about the day he would bear scars from battling Naxalites.
In his earlier stint with the CRPF’s 22 battalion, Chand said, he would watch CoBRA commandos practise every evening and feel inspired.
“I was in awe of them. I loved the discipline and the uniform. The way they performed their duty seemed glamorous to me. It inspired many of us and that is when I decided to become a CoBRA commando,” Chand said.
His “exemplary courage” in the field on February 23 has been hailed by the CRPF, receiving wide media coverage and going viral on social media. Even so, no one in Chand’s family, except his brother, knows about his injury because he’d rather not “trouble the family with this minor detail”.
Did he think about his family when the bullet hit him? “I did not have the luxury of thinking about them (he has two young children). When we are in the field, we cannot think of anything other than our target and teammates,” he said.
“Just like in the Army, we depend on each other for our lives. Any mistake on my part could have cost the lives of many of my friends,” he added.