Operation Vijay Took Back the Kargil Heights by 26 July 1999, From the Night Assault on Tololing on 12 June to Tiger Hill in July, and Four Soldiers Received the Param Vir Chakra

From the first sighting on 3 May to 26 July 1999, the Indian Army took back the ridges above National Highway 1A, the Srinagar to Leh road, from Pakistani soldiers who had crossed the Line of Control, and it did so without crossing the line itself. The Press Information Bureau (PIB), the central government’s information service, counts four Param Vir Chakras for the war, the highest Indian gallantry award, along with nine Maha Vir Chakras and 55 Vir Chakras.

How the intrusion happened and how the fighting ended in Washington is told in the main account of the war. This piece follows the fighting itself: Tololing, the artillery, Tiger Hill, the air campaign and the four soldiers decorated for it.

From a shepherd’s report to a full alert

The Kargil Review Committee, which the government set up on 29 July 1999, gives the timeline in its report. Shepherds detected the intrusion on 3 May and patrols confirmed it on 7 May. On 11 May a situation report from 15 Corps counted eight intrusions in the Batalik sector, involving 160 to 240 intruders. Northern Command put the whole Jammu and Kashmir theatre on alert the next day.

By 24 May two more brigades had moved in. On 25 May the Cabinet Committee on Security cleared the use of air power, with the condition, recorded by the United Service Institution of India (USI), that aircraft would not cross the Line of Control. The committee also records that the Western and Eastern fleets of the Navy were concentrated in the North Arabian Sea as a signal of deterrence.

The committee’s own verdict on the opening weeks is blunt. It found that the intrusion “came as a complete and total surprise to the Indian Government, Army and intelligence agencies.”

Tololing, from 1 June to the night of 12 June

Tololing and a neighbouring feature, Point 4590, overlooked the Dras sector and a long stretch of the highway. Honour Point, a memorial site for fallen soldiers, describes Tololing as the deepest Pakistani penetration beyond the Line of Control.

The PIB’s 2025 note records an earlier attempt, with heavy losses. On 1 June Major Rajesh Adhikari of 18 Grenadiers led his company against Tololing under artillery and small-arms fire. He crossed open ground to draw fire away from his men and silenced a key bunker before he was killed. He received the Maha Vir Chakra, the second-highest award, after his death.

The main assault went in on the night of 12 June. According to Honour Point, 2 Rajputana Rifles launched the battalion attack at 8:30 pm with orders to take the top by 6 am on 13 June, while two companies of 18 Grenadiers held a firm base behind them. Major Vivek Gupta’s Charlie Company was leading when three men of the first section were hit and the advance stalled. The citation says Gupta fired a rocket launcher at the position and charged. He was hit by two bullets, killed three defenders in hand-to-hand fighting, and the company then took the position. He was hit again and died on the spot, and was awarded the Maha Vir Chakra posthumously.

Kanwal gives 13 June as the date Tololing was captured after weeks of fighting.

The Bofors guns on the highway

The guns that cleared the way at Tololing stood on the national highway itself. The defence analyst Gurmeet Kanwal, writing in DailyO on 26 July 2019, says 155 mm Bofors medium guns and 105 mm field guns fired in the direct role, meaning gunners aimed at bunkers they could see instead of shelling over a ridge. He puts the fire on Tololing at more than 100 guns, mortars and rocket launchers. At Tiger Hill he adds 122 mm Grad rocket launchers, also firing directly.

The Army’s figures, given to DNA on 26 July 2016 by Colonel S. D. Goswami of Northern Command, are large. Artillery fired more than 250,000 shells, bombs and rockets in the war, about 5,000 a day from 300 guns, mortars and rocket launchers, and about 9,000 on the day Tiger Hill was retaken. Each battery fired more than one round a minute for 17 days. The same report calls the 155 mm FH 77-B Bofors the mainstay of the artillery, with a range of 30 km, and says it performed well despite the controversy over its induction into service.

Kanwal records that three officers and 34 soldiers of the artillery died, and that three artillery regiments received the Chief of the Army Staff’s Unit Citation. In 2023 the Army named Point 5140, Captain Vikram Batra’s first Kargil objective, Gun Hill, to honour the artillery regiments, the PIB says.

Tiger Hill, the climb of 3 July

On 3 July, under heavy shelling, a platoon of 18 Grenadiers began to climb the icy cliff face of Tiger Hill. Grenadier Yogendra Singh Yadav, the PIB’s account runs, destroyed the first bunker, which let the platoon climb further, and kept going after bullets hit his shoulder and abdomen. The PIB’s later note on the Param Vir Dirgha, the portrait gallery at Rashtrapati Bhavan, puts the approach at nearly 16,500 feet and says he volunteered to lead the climbing team.

Brigadier Kushal Thakur, who commanded 18 Grenadiers, recalled to the Tribune in 2020 that a surprise assault by the Ghatak commando platoon under Lieutenant Balwan Singh, with Havaldar Madan and Yadav in it, opened the way, while Captain Sachin Nimbalkar led his company from the front and 8 Sikh supported. The Tribune gives 4 July for the raising of the tricolour. Kanwal gives 5 July for the recapture, so the final date depends on which account is followed.

The Tribune lists the battalion’s losses in those two fights as its second in command, Lieutenant Colonel R. Vishwanathan, Major Adhikari, two junior commissioned officers and 21 other ranks. The battalion received 52 gallantry awards, including a Param Vir Chakra, two Maha Vir Chakras and six Vir Chakras.

Operation Safed Sagar

The Army had asked on 8 May for attack helicopters, and the government chose not to use them, since they risked escalation, the USI paper says. After the Cabinet Committee’s decision of 25 May, the Air Force began Operation Safed Sagar the next day. The first strike took off at 6:30 am on 26 May, flown by MiG-21, MiG-27 and MiG-23 fighters, with MiG-29s covering them.

The first days cost aircraft. On 27 May a MiG-27 developed mechanical trouble and its pilot, Flight Lieutenant K. Nachiketa, ejected. Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja’s MiG-21, circling to look for him, was shot down, and Ahuja received the Vir Chakra after his death. A Mi-17 helicopter was lost on 28 May. Air Vice Marshal Dev Ganesh writes that armed helicopters were then withdrawn and fighters flew modified profiles outside the range of the Stinger surface-to-air missiles.

Two dates mark the change. On 16 and 17 June MiG-27s and Mirage 2000s struck the Muntho Dhalo supply depot, in the USI’s account. On 24 June two Mirage 2000s dropped Paveway laser-guided bombs on the enemy battalion headquarters on Tiger Hill, the Air Force’s first operational use of such a bomb, according to Phillip Camp. Dev Ganesh quotes an Army message crediting that attack with the deaths of five Pakistani officers, and he calls the systematic strikes on three of the hill’s four target groups directly responsible for the fall of Tiger Hill. That is an Air Force officer’s judgement and not a settled assessment.

Strike operations ended on 12 July. The USI paper counts 550 strike missions, 150 reconnaissance missions, more than 500 escort flights and 2,185 helicopter sorties. Dev Ganesh, counting to 12 July, gives about 580 strike missions and about 2,500 helicopter sorties. The USI calls it the first use of combat air power in mountains above 15,000 feet.

The four Param Vir Chakras

The PIB’s summaries of the four awards, with dates it gives, run as follows.

Lieutenant Manoj Kumar Pandey of 1/11 Gorkha Rifles cleared Khalubar Ridge in Batalik. Honour Point dates the attack to the night of 2 to 3 July and says the citation names him Lieutenant, though the PIB and later records call him Captain. The PIB says he destroyed two bunkers and, wounded in the shoulder and legs, pressed on against more positions. Honour Point adds that the fourth was the one where he was fatally hit.

Grenadier Yogendra Singh Yadav’s climb at Tiger Hill is described above. The Tribune reported in January 2000 that he was 19 and had been hit by about 15 bullets, a count that other accounts give differently.

Rifleman Sanjay Kumar of 13 JAK Rifles was a lead scout on 4 July for a flat-top feature in the Mushkoh valley. Hit by fire from a bunker, he fought the occupants face to face and killed three, then picked up the machine gun they abandoned and turned it on the others as they fled.

Captain Vikram Batra of 13 JAK Rifles took Point 5140 and then Point 4875 on 7 July, where he was killed. His story is told in the article on Batra and the film Shershaah.

The Tribune reported on 23 January 2000 that all four would be presented on Republic Day, the first Param Vir Chakras in more than a decade, which took the total from 17 to 21. Five of the earlier 17 were for the first Kashmir war of 1947 and 1948. The full list is in the article on how the award was designed.

The count of Indian dead

Three figures appear in official material. The Kargil Review Committee, writing while the war was fresh, recorded 474 Army and Air Force dead and 1,109 wounded as of 26 July 1999. The PIB’s 2020 release gives 527 Indian soldiers killed. In 2025 the Army said it had visited the families of 545 dead, a group that the PIB’s note breaks down as 537 from the Army, five from the Air Force, one from the Border Security Force and two civilians. The PIB’s 2025 note also says more than a thousand were wounded.

No official note used here explains how 527 and 545 relate. The same 2020 release says 1,042 Pakistani soldiers were killed, which is an Indian claim. The Kargil Review Committee says Pakistan’s losses were heavier than India’s. PTI reported on 18 November 2010 that the Pakistan Army had put the names of 453 soldiers and officers on its website.

The review and the memorial

The Kargil Review Committee had four members: K. Subrahmanyam as chairman, Lieutenant General K. K. Hazari (retired), B. G. Verghese and Satish Chandra. Its summary recommends reorganising national security management, the Defence Ministry and the service headquarters, an integrated defence intelligence agency and a full-time National Security Adviser. It does not call for a Chief of Defence Staff by name.

Ashu Maan of the Centre for Land Warfare Studies records what followed. The Integrated Defence Staff was set up soon after the war, the National Technical Research Organisation and the Defence Intelligence Agency were created, and the first Chief of Defence Staff was appointed in 2019.

India marks 26 July each year as Kargil Vijay Diwas. At the 26th observance in 2025, at the Kargil War Memorial in Dras, 545 lamps were lit, one for each soldier who died in Operation Vijay.