Major Somnath Sharma's Company of 4 Kumaon Held the Hills Above Badgam, Three Miles From Srinagar Airfield, on 3 November 1947, and He Received India's First Param Vir Chakra

On the afternoon of 3 November 1947, D Company of the 4th Battalion, the Kumaon Regiment, held a hill position west of the village of Badgam, three miles from Srinagar airfield, against a tribal force that had come across country to put the airstrip out of action. Its commander, Major Somnath Sharma, was killed in the fighting. The Army and the Press Information Bureau (PIB), the central government’s information service, say the stand gave reinforcements time to close the route to the city, and Sharma became the first of the 21 men to receive the Param Vir Chakra, India’s highest wartime gallantry award.

The best account of the hours comes from the officer who was on the radio with him, Brigadier L. P. Sen, who commanded 161 Infantry Brigade in Srinagar and wrote it down in Slender Was the Thread (1969). Other accounts add numbers and quotations that Sen’s book does not carry. Where they differ, each figure below is given with the name of whoever states it.

Why a patrol went west of the airfield

The Instrument of Accession by which Maharaja Hari Singh joined Jammu and Kashmir to India is dated 26 October 1947, and the Governor General’s acceptance is dated 27 October. The Tribune reported in 2019 that the first troops, the 1st Sikh, landed at Srinagar on 27 October. Raiders were already at Baramulla, about 35 miles from Srinagar by road. The airlift and the rest of that war are covered in the first Kashmir war.

Indian Defence Review, drawing on the Army’s history of the operation, says D Company of 4 Kumaon under Sharma was flown in on 31 October and A Company, under Captain H. S. Bolina, on 2 November. The same account says Sen arrived on 2 November to take over 161 Brigade after its first commander was wounded by a stray bullet on 31 October.

According to Sen’s book, no patrols had been run in the area west of the airfield, because the units placed there had been moved in temporarily and were busy guarding the strip. He decided that brigade headquarters would plan one itself. Two rifle companies of 4 Kumaon, held as the brigade reserve, were to climb to the hills above Badgam and make a firm base. A company of 1 Kumaon under Captain Ronnie Wood would pass through it and walk about eight miles across country to meet 1 Punjab at Magam. Sharma and Wood reported to Sen at 8 a.m. on 3 November to go over the plan on the map.

A company commander with his arm in plaster

Somnath Sharma was born on 31 January 1923 at Dadh, a village near Palampur in Kangra, and went to Sherwood College in Nainital. The Tribune and Honourpoint both give his commissioning as 22 February 1942, and Honourpoint adds the unit, the 8th Battalion of the 19th Hyderabad Regiment, which later became 4 Kumaon. He served in the Arakan campaign in Burma and was mentioned in despatches, according to Cardozo. His father, Major General Amar Nath Sharma, and two of his brothers also served. One of them, General V. N. Sharma, was Chief of the Army Staff from 1 May 1988 to 30 June 1990, ThePrint reported when he died in July 2026.

His arm was in plaster when he flew to Kashmir. In Sen’s book it is the right arm, broken in a fall on the hockey ground, and Sharma had been advised to stay in Delhi until it healed. Sen records his reply as saying that he knew his men better than anyone else and that if they were going into action they were not going without him. Cardozo gives the left arm and a fall during gymnastics, and the citation text as reproduced by Honourpoint says left hand. Nobody disagrees that it was in plaster.

What Sen’s book records, hour by hour

Soon after half past nine Sharma reported by wireless that his two companies were in position on the hills near Badgam. Wood’s company of 1 Kumaon walked to Magam, met 1 Punjab and was back at the airfield by about one o’clock, having seen no sign of the enemy and finding the villages undamaged.

From half past one, Sharma was under orders to start thinning out. At two o’clock Sharma reported that one company had gone back toward the airfield, and Sen asked him to keep the other, D Company, on the position for another hour. Sharma said it was quiet and that the villagers were going about their business.

At twenty-five minutes to three he radioed that people in the houses of Badgam were firing at his company. The fire was ineffective, he said, and he had not answered it for fear of killing women and children. Sen records that Sharma then reported a large force coming out of a depression to the west with mortar and automatic fire, and that as the company was heavily outnumbered the enemy was gaining ground. A loud explosion followed and the set went off the air. Sen later wrote that it was a mortar bomb landing near Sharma.

His air liaison officer was sent back to the strip to ask for fighters, and Sen cut the squares covering Badgam out of the brigade’s only map so that the pilots could use it. Fighters were over Badgam within minutes. The citation text as reproduced by Honourpoint says Sharma laid out cloth markers to guide aircraft onto their targets in full view of the enemy, and PIB’s December 2025 feature says he marked targets with cloth strips.

1 Punjab, under Lieutenant Colonel G. I. S. Kullar, was ordered from Magam to the Humhom and Badgam area to seal the route into Srinagar. When Sen visited just before last light, the battalion was in position at Humhom and had taken under command the men of the 4 Kumaon company that had fallen back. Brigade headquarters, about 25 men with rifles and pistols, stood to all night. Patrols at dawn found the area clear.

How many men on each side

Sen gives no strength for the raiders. He says only that the force was large and that its leader, whom he calls Kurshed and the Tribune names as Khurshid Anwar, later told the press in Karachi that he had routed an Indian brigade, when by Sen’s reckoning he had engaged one rifle company. The other accounts, all from the Indian side, differ:

• Raiders: Cardozo gives about 500, as does the Tribune of 11 August 2025, while the Tribune of 2019 gives 500 to 700. The Army’s Victor Force statement of 2017 gives about 700, and Indian Defence Review says over 700. The citation text as reproduced by Honourpoint says 700, while the version posted by Aviation and Defence Universe says about 500. An ANI report of 2017 quotes the Victor Force commander saying 1,000.
• D Company: Cardozo says fewer than 90 men, and Ajai Shukla in Business Standard says about a hundred.
• Indian dead: the Army’s 2017 statement says Sharma, one junior commissioned officer (a rank between officer and soldier) and 20 other ranks, which is 22. Cardozo gives the same, naming Subedar Prem Singh Mehta, and adds 26 wounded. Indian Defence Review says 15 killed and 32 wounded.
• Raider losses: the citation text as posted by Aviation and Defence Universe says about 200. Indian Defence Review says about 260 killed and 320 wounded, and Cardozo says more than 300 bodies were counted when Badgam was retaken. These are Indian estimates, and none of the sources cites a count from the raiders’ side.

Sen’s account also does not carry the radio message that appears in nearly every later telling, that the enemy was 50 yards away and that Sharma would not withdraw an inch. It appears in the citation as reproduced by Honourpoint and in ANI’s 2017 report of the Army’s tribute. tuput could not open the Gazette notification or the National War Memorial page, so the wording rests on those reproductions.

What the stand bought, and how Sen judged it

Sen thought the raiders missed an opening. Features three miles from Badgam commanded the airstrip, he wrote, and one aircraft hit on the ground or forced down would have closed it. He called the failure to use them “the chance of a lifetime” and offered two guesses without settling on either: Kurshed had a bullet wound in the leg, or he misjudged the strength facing him. On the morning of 4 November, Sen says, he told Sardar Patel and the Defence Minister, Baldev Singh, that only good fortune had seen the brigade through.

He also wrote that Sharma and his company “had fought a great battle against tremendous odds” and had uncovered an unknown and dangerous threat. He thought the armed men in Badgam were probably tribesmen who had slipped into the village, and that Sharma’s refusal to fire back into it spared the villagers.

Afterward Sen pulled 1 Sikh back from Pattan, hoping the raiders would read Badgam and the withdrawal as a Kumaon defeat. The Tribune and DefenceXP date the Battle of Shalateng to 7 November, which the Tribune says lasted 12 hours and went against the raiders, and DefenceXP says Baramulla was retaken on 8 November. Sepoy Dewan Singh of the same company received the Maha Vir Chakra after his death. The Indian Defence Review account describes him as the Bren gunner who fired from the hip until he was hit.

The first Param Vir Chakra

The Param Vir Chakra was instituted on 26 January 1950, and Shukla writes that Sharma was awarded it retrospectively on that day, with four other winners of the 1947 to 1948 Kashmir war. PIB’s feature on the Param Vir Dirgha gallery at Rashtrapati Bhavan, published on 21 December 2025, describes him as the first recipient and says his action delayed the enemy for six hours. The six hours also appear in the citation text as reproduced by Honourpoint. Sen’s clock times, firing from twenty-five minutes to three and 1 Punjab in position by last light, do not give a duration, so the figure stays attributed to the citation and PIB.

PIB’s release of 21 January 2023 says the 21 largest unnamed islands of the Andaman and Nicobar group would be named after the 21 awardees, the largest after the first awardee, and its list opens with Sharma. The ceremony took place on 23 January 2023. A Class VIII English chapter on him entered the NCERT syllabus in 2025, PIB said on 7 August 2025. The Tribune reported on 11 August 2025 that a new statue of him had been put up in Palampur for unveiling on 15 August, built by the municipal corporation for Rs 8 lakh, with the state’s Chief Minister assuring residents that an educational institution in his village of Dadh would carry his name.