Lance Naik Albert Ekka Silenced Two Machine Guns at Gangasagar on 3 December 1971, and 14 Guards Sealed the Southern Approach to Akhaura

Gangasagar was a railway-station position about six kilometres west of Agartala, just across the border in East Pakistan, in the Army summaries and ThePrint, and on 3 December 1971 the 14th Battalion of the Brigade of the Guards took it. The Ministry of Defence’s Official History of the 1971 war says the capture sealed the Pakistani approach to Akhaura from the south. Lance Naik Albert Ekka, then 28, was in the left forward company. He silenced two machine guns during the assault and died of his wounds after the objective was captured, and the Param Vir Chakra followed, posthumously.

The Official History’s list of 1971 gallantry awards names four recipients of the Param Vir Chakra, India’s highest wartime honour. Ekka is the only one in the list for the Eastern Front, which it places in the 4 Corps sector. The other three, Sekhon, Khetarpal and Hoshiar Singh, won theirs in the west, and the tank fight at Basantar is among them. The air defence of Srinagar is the subject of a separate article.

From Zari village to a Guards battalion

Albert Ekka was born on 27 December 1942 in Zari, a village in Chainpur tehsil. The Official History gives the district as Ranchi, in Bihar; the Gumla district administration, whose page on him is one of the official sources here, gives Gumla, in what is now Jharkhand. The Tribune notes that the village was then in Ranchi district and is now in Gumla. His parents were Julius and Mariam Ekka, and the Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS) journal Scholar Warrior describes the family as Oraon Adivasi and Christian.

The Tribune’s account, by the retired gunner Lt Col Dilbag Singh Dabas, says he was at ease tracking and a good shot with the bow and arrow, and was exceptionally good at hockey. In its telling, Subedar Major Bhagirath Soren of the 7th Bihar spotted him at a district tournament and got him enrolled. The Gumla page and Bharat Rakshak both give his enrolment date as 27 December 1962, his twentieth birthday.

The Brigade of the Guards began raising on 1 September 1949, on a decision by General K. M. Cariappa, the Tribune says, and a new battalion, the 32nd Guards, was raised in January 1968. The Tribune says it took in men from the Kumaon Regiment, the Sikh Light Infantry and the Bihar Regiment, and that Ekka’s company of the 7th Bihar was allotted to it. In April 1971 it was renamed the 14th Battalion, the Brigade of the Guards, which is the 14 Guards of the citation. CLAWS adds that the young battalion had trained the Mukti Bahini, the Bengali resistance force, before the war.

Operation Nut Cracker

The Official History describes the plan as Operation Nut Cracker: capture Karnel Bazar, Gangasagar and Akhaura, and deny the Pakistani side the use of the Singarbil jetty. It names 73 Mountain Brigade and 311 Mountain Brigade, with S Force of Bengali battalions, as the troops earmarked, in the 4 Corps sector east of Dhaka, opposite Tripura. CLAWS places 73 Brigade in 57 Mountain Division.

The Official History says 73 Brigade launched the operation on the night of 1 to 2 December, with 14 Guards setting up road blocks south and west of Gangasagar while 19 Punjab and a troop of tanks took Karnel Bazar. The Pakistani air raids on Indian airfields, which the same history times at last light on 3 December, between 1740 and 1745 hours, came after that.

CLAWS, which lists the Official History and the 14 Guards battalion digest and war diary among its references, describes what the Guards were walking into. The Gangasagar complex was the railway station, Mogra, Goal Gangail and an area called the Triangle. The ground around it was marsh and low paddy, with anti-tank and anti-personnel mines and wire. Army intelligence had put a single company in the position, and the Mukti Bahini said a battalion. The battalion found roughly three companies of 12 Frontier Force, a company of 12 Azad Kashmir and a company of Razakars, the article says. The Official History is lighter on numbers and speaks of the battalion headquarters of 12 Frontier Force and about four companies across the whole Akhaura area.

The attack along the railway line

14 Guards moved cross-country for about five hours and came up just south of Gangasagar, in CLAWS’s account. Patrols saw the Pakistani troops moving freely along the railway track and concluded it was not mined. The attack therefore went in along the line, in single file astride the rails. The citation, as CLAWS quotes it, calls it an action with no parallel in the Army’s history for that reason.

About 100 yards from the position, the defenders opened up with heavy automatic fire. The mines and wire took their toll, CLAWS writes, and the survivors closed with the bunkers. Hand-to-hand fighting followed, with grenades through loopholes and the bayonet. A light machine gun in a bunker was holding up Ekka’s company.

All the circulating texts of the Param Vir Chakra citation agree on what he did next. He charged the bunker, was seriously wounded, bayoneted the two men serving the gun and silenced it. He would not be evacuated and kept fighting forward, clearing bunker after bunker. At the northern end of the objective a medium machine gun on the second storey of a building stopped the advance and caused heavy casualties. Ekka crawled to the building and threw a grenade through the loophole of the bunker, which killed one man and wounded another. The gun kept firing. He climbed a side wall, entered the bunker and bayoneted the man still at the gun.

The Honourpoint copy of the citation sums up his action as “the most conspicuous valour and determination.” It records that he died of his injuries after the objective was captured. The Official History’s own award list says he gave his life on 3 December 1971 in a charge on a Pakistani machine-gun position at Gangasagar.

What the fall of Gangasagar changed

By the Official History’s reckoning, 14 Guards and 19 Punjab had dispersed the Pakistani force at Gangasagar by 1300 hours on 3 December. CLAWS puts the capture of the whole complex at 1000 hours. After that the brigade moved towards the main Brahmanbaria to Comilla road. The history also credits Major Ashok Kumar Tara of 14 Guards with the Vir Chakra for the same battle. ThePrint’s 2021 report quotes Colonel Tara, retired, as a veteran who fought at Gangasagar with Ekka.

The Official History says 73 Brigade’s capture of Gangasagar sealed off the Pakistani approach to Akhaura from the south. The attack on Akhaura itself came from the south that night: the main assault by 18 Rajput of 311 Brigade began at 2200 hours on 4 to 5 December, and the Official History records that the unit took the rail bridge over the Titas river intact on the morning of 5 December and that Akhaura fell the same day. 4 Corps then turned 57 Mountain Division towards Brahmanbaria and Ashuganj, to cut the withdrawal routes of the Pakistani garrison at Sylhet. The surrender in Dhaka followed on 16 December, when the Instrument of Surrender was signed at 1631 hours Indian time, by the history’s record.

Where the accounts differ

Several details change from one text to the next, and the dates matter most. The Official History, CLAWS and the Gumla page’s date of action all give 3 December 1971. The hour of the assault is given as 2 am in the Tribune, 0400 in CLAWS’s narrative, 0415 in the citation text CLAWS quotes, and 0400 on 4 December in the Army-derived summary on the Gumla page and Bharat Rakshak. This article uses 3 December, which the Official History’s award list and its operational account support.

The depth of the objective is half a kilometre in the Tribune’s text, a mile in the Honourpoint and CLAWS texts and 1.5 kilometres in the Gumla and Bharat Rakshak summaries. Those summaries also say the fall of Gangasagar forced the enemy to vacate Akhaura. The Official History describes a separate battle for Akhaura on 4 to 5 December, so the effect on Akhaura is stated here in its wording. CLAWS puts Gangasagar about four kilometres south of Akhaura, where the Army summaries say about six kilometres west of Agartala, and both can hold for a position in that angle of the border. Some popular pages place his death at the battle of Hilli. The Official History and every citation text name Gangasagar.

How he is remembered

India Post issued a stamp for him in January 2000 as one of five in a set titled 50 Years of the Republic of India Gallantry Award Winners, alongside Karam Singh, Abdul Hamid, N. J. S. Sekhon and M. N. Mulla. The catalogue shows 28 January 2000 beside the set, while an IANS report dates the stamp to 26 January, the fiftieth Republic Day. In Ranchi, a major junction is named Albert Ekka Chowk and carries his statue. Gumla district has an administrative circle in his name, which IANS calls the Param Vir Chakra Albert Ekka block. The Tribune notes that 4 Corps displays his bust near the main gate of its headquarters at Tezpur.

Bangladesh recognised him too. IANS reported that the Bangladeshi government conferred the Friends of Liberation War honour on him for his “outstanding support and sacrifice to the 1971 war as a foreigner.” ThePrint quotes Colonel Tara saying he and Ekka’s widow, Balamdina, were invited to Dhaka in October 2012 to receive it. On 21 October 2012 they were taken to the Gangasagar battlefield, where, by his recollection, she said her prayers and paid homage to her husband.

Ekka was buried at Sripalli village in Dukli, 15 km from Agartala, with ten other soldiers, in the IANS account. Villagers led by Bhuban Das built a small memorial there and, Das told IANS in 2016, have garlanded it every Vijay Diwas since 1971. In December 2015 an urn of soil from the burial site was handed to the family in Gumla. In January 2016 Balamdina, her son Vincent and a party from Jharkhand visited Sripalli to settle a question the family had raised about the soil in that urn, and collected soil there, which she said she wanted to use for a memorial in Zari. Balamdina Ekka died on 16 April 2021 and was buried in Jari village, ThePrint reported, survived by Vincent, his wife and four grandchildren.