Pakistani Jets Wrecked the Bhuj Runway on the Night of 8 December 1971. About 300 Village Women Had the Air Force Flying Again in 72 Hours

From 3 December 1971, Squadron Leader Vijay Karnik says, the Indian Air Force base at Bhuj in Gujarat was bombed from the air every night. “3rd (December) onwards, every night we were getting bombings over there (Bhuj),” he told India TV in an interview given on Independence Day 2021.

Then came the night of 8 December. Pakistan, he said, “planned a concentrated attack on the night of 8th (December), 9th in Bhuj.” Of the result he said: “they destroyed our runway.” By his count the strip was “damaged in 8 places.”

Karnik commanded the base. He had joined the air force in 1962, at 23, according to the Nagpur daily The Hitavada, so he was nine years into his service when the raids began. He gave India TV the reason a wrecked runway could not be left alone: “Because it’s a big setback for an Air Force base becoming non-operational in a war.”

What the first night of the war did to the runways

Bhuj was not the only target. On the evening of 3 December, according to The Tribune, orders went out at 5:30 pm and the first Pakistani formations were airborne by 5:40 pm. They went for eleven Indian air bases, Bhuj among them. The same account says the damage was limited to runways at some places and one radar station, and that Indira Gandhi addressed the country that evening and called the strikes a declaration of war against India.

Most of those runways were back in use quickly. HistoryNet’s Jon Guttman writes that “by the next morning India had mobilized forces for the yet-to-be-declared war and repaired virtually all the damaged runways.” The Bhuj strip was a longer job. ThePrint reports that a contractor looked at it and said it would take six months.

The wider war was short. The Tribune calls India’s plan for the western front “part of the operational plan to go for the jugular in the east while holding ground in the west.” Dhaka surrendered on 16 December, and the western front ceasefire was accepted on 17 December. The war that produced Bangladesh is told in the piece on 1971. This one stays with one runway in Kutch, the district on the Pakistan border, in the days before the ceasefire.

Six months, said the contractor

The air force first asked the Border Security Force to restore the strip, The Better India reported in 2019, but labourers were scarce. The local collector then asked the village head of Madhapar, the sarpanch, whether people could help, according to ThePrint. Madhapar is about five kilometres from Bhuj, says The Tribune. The Better India names the sarpanch as Jadhavjibhai Hirani and says that when he “personally asked the women to help the forces, the women willingly signed up.”

Karnik’s account of the same step starts with himself. “I thought of Madhapur, a village close to Bhuj,” he told India TV. “I approached them and somehow they got convinced.”

On the base, The Better India counts 50 air force personnel, 60 men of the Defence Security Corps, which guards military installations, and two senior officers working under Karnik.

Thirty, then a hundred, then the whole village

Karnik gave the build-up of workers in steps. “Initially 30 came, followed by 100 and then the whole village came.” Kanbai Shivji Hirani, who was 24 in 1971 and spoke to WION in 2025, gave nearly the same sequence: “On the first day, 30 women went. On the second day, even more went. By the third day, 322 women were working.”

The hours were long. Hirani said: “We left home at 7 AM and returned at 7 PM.” ThePrint says the work ran from 7 am to 7 pm for three days. Samuben Vishram Banderi, also quoted by ThePrint, remembered what it cost at home: “We left our children at home. My in-laws were scared, but the love for my country was running in my veins.”

Karnik says the women were educated, and that girls in the village were studying in schools and colleges. Valbai Seghani, another of the workers, told The Better India: “If we were to die, it would have been an honourable death.”

Pale green saris and a siren drill

Work on an airfield under attack needed rules, and Karnik laid them out: “We told them how to take shelter during the bomb raid, there were some bushes to hide underneath. We told them what is the air raid warning signal, what is an all-clear signal.”

ThePrint’s account of the women’s version is the same drill: hide at the first siren, go back to work at the second. To avoid being spotted by enemy aircraft, the women wore pale green saris, ThePrint says. Viru Lachhani told The Better India of another measure: “We were instructed to cover the strip with cow dung to camouflage it from the enemy’s planes.”

The Better India adds that the workers kept to the hours of daylight, and that local temples fed them.

Karnik put the stakes in plain terms. “We were fighting a war and if there had been any casualties of any of these women, it would have been a great loss to the war effort,” The Better India quoted him in 2019. None of the reports cited here mentions a casualty among the women.

Day four, 4 pm

The Better India says the women were alerted on 9 December and that combat aircraft took off from the repaired strip on the fourth day, at 4 pm. The same report puts the repair at 72 hours, the figure ThePrint and WION repeat.

Karnik says he spent “almost 3-4 hours” with Indira Gandhi at Bhuj on 24 December, a week after the ceasefire, and that she said India had once had one Jhansi ki Rani and now had 300, a reference to the queen of Jhansi who fought the British in 1857. That is Karnik’s report of her words. The Better India dates a gift offer to three years after the war and says the women turned down what she offered with the words “What we did was for our country.” The Hitavada says she gave a group reward of Rs 50,000. The accounts agree on the sum and differ on who handed it over and when.

Karnik also says his base shot down two Pakistani aircraft over Bhuj earlier in the war. That is his claim, and none of the coverage cites a service record for it.

Figures that do not agree

The bomb count changes with every telling. The Better India reported “over 14 Napalm bombs”, napalm being jellied petrol that burns. Karnik’s own measure is eight damaged points on the runway. The women told Aaj Tak in 2025 that Pakistan dropped “over 20 bombs.” ThePrint, the same year, gives 64 bombs, more than 22 craters and eight aircraft damaged. Film Companion repeats a total of 35 raids, 92 bombs and 22 rockets over 14 days without saying where the count comes from.

The workforce varies too. Most accounts say 300 women. Hirani remembers 322 working by the third day, and ThePrint says 70 to 80 villagers came on the first day, where Karnik and Hirani say 30. Aaj Tak has the women recalling a repair estimate of four to six months, where ThePrint reports a contractor’s six. WION says the strip worked again within four days, and The Hitavada and ThePrint say 72 hours.

The film names the lead woman, played by Sonakshi Sinha, Sunderben Jetha Madharparya. None of the reports quoted here names one person as the leader of the women. They name Seghani, Lachhani, Hiruben Bhudia, Hirani, Banderi and Shaambhai Khokhani among the workers, and the sarpanch, Jadhavjibhai Hirani, is the one local figure The Better India credits with asking.

Rs 50,000 and a village hall

According to ThePrint, the government gave the villagers Rs 50,000 (half a lakh rupees), and they spent it on a panchayat ghar, a village council hall at the entrance to Madhapar. The hall is named Veerangana Bhavan. A statue marks the entrance, with Veerangana Smarak, the women’s memorial, written at its base. The Better India also reports a war memorial called Virangana Smarak at Madhapar. Aaj Tak has the women saying they built a room in the panchayat building with the money.

A sapling in Delhi

On 26 May 2025, at a public event in Bhuj, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met 13 of the surviving women, The Tribune reports, less than three weeks after Operation Sindoor, the missile strikes of 7 May 2025 that how India answers an attack covers. Aaj Tak names four of the women present: Kanbai Hirani, 80, Shambai Khokni, 83, Lalbai Bhuaria, 82, and Samu Bhanderi, 75.

The women gave the Prime Minister Sindoor saplings, and Aaj Tak says he told them he would plant one at his residence. WION and Swarajya report that he did so on 5 June 2025, World Environment Day, at 7 Lok Kalyan Marg in New Delhi.