Operation Cactus Landed 316 Indian Troops on Hulhule Island About Four Hours After They Left Agra on 3 November 1988, Reached the Maldives President by About 2.15 am and Sent Two Frigates After the Hijacked Ship Progress Light

Two Indian Air Force Il-76 transports landed in the dark on Hulhule Island, the airport island next to Malé, the Maldivian capital, on the night of 3 November 1988. They had left Agra about four hours earlier with 316 troops, the first wave of the 50th Independent Parachute Brigade. By about 2.15 am on 4 November, Indian soldiers had reached President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom in the house where he was hiding.

The Army, Air Force and Navy all took part in what India called Operation Cactus. The Journal of Defence Studies, published by the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA), counts 31 aircraft and 1,650 troops in the airlift and calls it the first rapid reaction strategic mission the Air Force flew in the neighbourhood. Two officers who were on the ground, Lt Gen Vinod Bhatia and Brigadier S. C. Joshi, wrote accounts for the Centre for Joint Warfare Studies in New Delhi. The sources agree on the outline and differ on clock times and casualty counts, so each figure below carries its source.

A raid on Malé before dawn on 3 November

Joshi, who commanded 6 Para as a colonel, writes that the attackers left Sri Lanka on the night of 31 October and 1 November in three fishing trawlers and came ashore at Malé at about 3.30 am on 3 November. UPI, reporting from Colombo the next day, gave 4.30 am. Joshi names the leader as Abdullah Luthufi, a Maldivian businessman who had secured the services of a Sri Lankan Tamil group, the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE).

Strength is given as about 80 by the journal article, about 150 (hired by three disgruntled Maldivian businessmen) by UPI on 8 November, and 100 to 500 in the first Indian information, Joshi says. The attackers took the radio and television stations and the presidential palace and besieged the headquarters of the National Security Service, the 1,500-strong force that handled policing, fire-fighting and internal security. Bhatia, then Brigade Major of the 50th Brigade, writes that the service kept them out of its armoury, which the journal article says stopped them from overthrowing the government.

Gayoom went into hiding in a safe house. The Maldives sent its call for help to several countries, among them the United States, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India, the journal article says. US forces at Diego Garcia did not act, and Sri Lanka kept commandos on standby without launching; both looked to India.

Delhi decides and Agra scrambles

A crisis committee chaired by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi met in South Block on 3 November, the journal article says, while the Indian Peace Keeping Force was still fighting in Sri Lanka. Gandhi later told Parliament that the Maldives had “appealed to us in desperation in its grave hour of need”, in the words the article quotes.

At Agra, Bhatia recalls, the first call came from Military Operations in Delhi at about 10 am. By 10.40 the Vice Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen S. F. Rodrigues, had ordered the brigade to the Maldives, with one battalion group to be on board by 12.30 pm. Its units were scattered, with 7 Para on training elsewhere.

A team from Delhi landed at Agra at about 3.15 pm by Bhatia’s count and 3.30 by Joshi’s. It included Arun Banerjee, India’s High Commissioner to the Maldives, who happened to be in Delhi. In Bhatia’s record the task was “To rescue the President of Maldives and escort him safely to India”. Joshi and the journal article say the troops had a tourist guidebook with photographs of Malé and the runway in place of a map, and that the aircrew’s chart showed Gan, an island 400 kilometres south, until Banerjee noticed.

Land or drop

The plan from Delhi was an airborne assault. Plan A, in Bhatia’s description, had sixty paratroopers dropping onto Hulhule from one Il-76, a limit set by the packed parachutes the Air Force had that day, with the rest to land after them; Joshi says seventy. Il-76s normally need a drop zone 1.5 to 2 kilometres long, the journal article says, and it estimates that 60 to 70 per cent of the paratroopers would have drowned in the sea around Malé.

Joshi writes that Brigadier Farukh Bulsara, the brigade commander, Group Captain A. G. Bewoor of No. 44 Squadron and he himself rejected the drop at Agra and chose to land. In Bhatia’s account Bulsara left the final decision until the aircraft neared the Maldives, and landing was “the less risky of the two alternatives”.

The Il-76s took off between about 5.30 pm (Bhatia) and 6 pm (Joshi and the journal article), flying as a pair, the second a kilometre behind the first with its lights off. The BBC reported within half an hour that Indian troops were on their way, the journal article says.

Over Hulhule, Bewoor confirmed by radio the code word that meant the airfield was still in friendly hands. Spelled Hudiya by Bhatia and Hadiya by Joshi, it is Dhivehi for “gift”, Bhatia told StratNews Global in 2020. Runway lights came on for a few seconds, ten by the journal article’s count and three to five by Joshi’s, who was aboard, and went off at touchdown. The lead aircraft stopped with three concrete slabs to spare, the article says; Joshi puts it about 300 metres short of the runway’s end.

For the first landing Bhatia gives 2148 hours and the journal article around 10 pm. Nobody held the airfield, and the landing was unopposed.

Across the water to the president

Joshi says engineers and 6 Para’s pioneer platoon found seven speedboats at a nearby tourist resort and brought them over to Hulhule in about 90 minutes, with frightened drivers; Bhatia says the troops commandeered local boats. As they set out, they saw a ship leaving Malé atoll. In Bhatia’s account it was engaged with all available firepower; Joshi says it took three rockets. It was the Progress Light, the ship the rebels had taken to escape.

On Malé, Joshi writes, troops were guided to the house where the Deputy Defence Minister, Ilyas Ibrahim, was hiding, and he helped persuade the president’s security staff to let them through. By Bhatia’s account Colonel Joshi and Major R. J. S. Dhillon had Gayoom out of his safe house by about 2.20 am; the journal article says 2.15. Both officers have him speaking to the Prime Minister at about 4.30 am. Gayoom wanted to stay in Malé while the orders were to bring him to India, Bhatia adds.

By morning more than 1,600 troops had landed at Hulhule, Bhatia says. The journal article records house-to-house searches with the Maldivian service that captured about 30 attackers.

Two frigates and the Progress Light

About 60 of the attackers fled on the Progress Light with seven hostages, among them a cabinet minister, Ahmed Mujuthaba, and his wife, the journal article says. An Indian Navy Il-38 landed at Hulhule at 8 am on 4 November after sighting a listing ship south-west of Malé, Bhatia writes, and INS Godavari and INS Betwa moved in on 6 November.

In 2014 the Defence Ministry’s Press Information Bureau (PIB) wrote that the two ships “responded to Maldives’ request and rescued abducted people from the fleeing mercenaries”, which earned lasting goodwill. Per the journal article, INS Tir joined them, Maldivian negotiators sailed aboard Godavari, and INS Deepak arrived later with 25 marine commandos.

UPI’s Malé report of 8 November puts the sea fight on the Sunday, 6 November. Witnesses described 12 hours of talks with the rebel leader, about 60 warning shots and a helicopter dropping a depth charge as a show of force. The captain of Godavari told UPI the ships fired across the freighter’s bows and that a later shot, aimed at stopping it, may have started a small fire. Joshi says Betwa later sank the ship, and the rebels were handed to the Maldivian authorities.

Where the accounts differ

Indian officials told UPI on 6 November that four hostages had died, three were missing and 20 had been freed. Witnesses told UPI at least 15 had been killed, seven mercenaries, four crew of the Progress Light and four hostages. Two hostages were executed by the mercenaries and two others apparently died in a shootout with Indian commandos, the Maldivian Foreign Minister said, adding that his government did not know the exact count. In Joshi’s account the rebels shot five hostages and threw them into the sea before the ship was boarded, and 68 hostages were found. Per the journal article, one hostage was killed before the ships opened fire.

For the whole attempt, UPI first reported at least 12 dead and 100 wounded, then at least 27 dead on 8 November. Maldivian accounts published in 2025 by Adhadhu and The Standard give 19 dead, including eight security personnel. UPI reported that Gandhi told Parliament the Indian force had crushed the attempt without a single Indian casualty, and Bhatia also writes of no casualties.

Both Bhatia and the journal article say 16 hours, Bhatia from the first indication of an operation and the article from the Maldivian call for help; Bhatia’s own times put the first call at about 10 am and the first landing at 2148.

What it meant for India and the Maldives

The journal article says the operation strengthened India-Maldives relations and brought international praise. Time reported that President Ronald Reagan congratulated New Delhi for a “valuable contribution to regional stability”. The Ministry of External Affairs’ March 2024 brief says India’s prompt help in 1988 led to trust and long-term friendly relations, and that withdrawing troops once they were no longer needed eased fears of Indian dominance.

Withdrawal figures vary by source. By Bhatia’s account the brigade, less 6 Para and two companies, left by 17 November; the journal article says about 500 men of 3 and 7 Para stayed ten days at the Maldivian president’s request, and Joshi writes that 6 Para stayed a year.

Defence and security cooperation has been a major area since 1988, the MEA brief says. It puts India’s share at about 70 per cent of the Maldives National Defence Force’s training needs, with over 1,500 trainees in ten years. In the PIB release, 1988 is the first of three Indian Navy responses in Maldivian crises, followed by the 2004 tsunami and the December 2014 water emergency. Later relief missions and credit lines are in India’s record as a first responder in the neighbourhood, and the Navy’s wider partnerships are in the SAGAR and MAHASAGAR visions.

Every 3 November the Maldives observes Victory Day. On Victory Day 2024 the President’s Office called the events of 3 November 1988 a terrorist attack and honoured Major General (retd) Moosa Ali Jaleel, among the first Maldivian officers to engage the attackers. Maldivian Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid said in 2019 that the Indian government’s military support “remains etched in our hearts”. In his 1989 Victory Day speech Gayoom said the Maldives owed a great debt to Rajiv Gandhi, his government and the people of India, Adhadhu reports.

Other readings exist. Time reported in 1989 that Pakistan accused New Delhi of having stage-managed the coup attempt, and described the Maldives action as an example of India taking the role of regional policeman. Former President Abdulla Yameen had argued, Adhadhu says, that the rebels could not have reached the Maldives unnoticed, and the sources cited here give no evidence for that view. The same outlet reported on 4 November 2025 that the current President’s Victory Day remarks did not mention Indian assistance, which it said earlier presidents had acknowledged. On 3 November 2025, Adhadhu says, Yameen wrote on X: “Today is a permanent reminder of the support of neighbouring India to the Maldives.”