2003 Gazi Baba killing reduced JeM to an army sans generals: BSF history book

New Delhi: The 2003 BSF operation which led to the killing of terrorist Gazi Baba in Jammu and Kashmir, and is now the subject of an upcoming action movie, reduced the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) to an "army without generals". It also earned the paramilitary force a dozen gallantry medals including two military decorations.

The operation has been etched in the official history book of the 1965 raised force that is primarily tasked to guard Indian fronts with Pakistan and Bangladesh apart from rendering a variety of duties in the country's internal security domain.

Ground Zero, a Hindi movie, is based on this operation and the exploits of the gallant BSF officers and troops who killed one of the most wanted terrorists of the time. The film is slated to release on April 25.

Actor Emraan Hashmi, 46, plays the role of Narendra Nath Dhar Dubey, the second-in-command rank officer of the BSF who led the action.

Rana Tahir Nadeem, alias Gazi Baba, was a "target" chased by the BSF since the day the Jaish-e-Mohammad attacked the Indian Parliament in December 2001.

Thanks to its "persistent" intelligence and surveillance efforts, the force got inputs on the elusive terrorist on August 29, 2003, according to the 319-page book. It was released by the force on its 50th anniversary in 2015.

During the period the operation was effected, the BSF was deployed in the Kashmir Valley for counter-terrorist operations and its vital and famed 'G branch' (intelligence wing) was known to produce "marvellous" results and "top of the class" snoop inputs, a senior BSF officer said.

The book, accessed by PTI, recounts how a source confirmed to Dhar that Gazi Baba, the chief operational commander of JeM and the "most dreaded" militant leader and the "mastermind" of the Parliament attack, was holed up in a house in Srinagar's Noorbagh area.

It was "imperative" for the BSF to conduct its operation the same night due to Gazi Baba's penchant for frequently changing his hideouts and his ability to evade capture, it said.

The operation was planned by Dubey, then the officiating Commandant of the 61st BSF battalion, and assisted by personnel drawn from its 193rd battalion.

The BSF team entered a locked up building on the morning of August 30, 2003 by breaking its door open but "as soon as this happened", the power supply was switched off by someone.

A search of the building led the BSF to five civilians, that included four women, but their responses were "incoherent and suspicious" leading the troops to believe there were militants hiding there, according to the book.

"While the men searched the second floor, the placement and design of a wardrobe in one of the rooms aroused their suspicion. When the BSF men kicked open this piece of furniture, a heavy volume of fire by automatic weapons and even grenades poured into them," the book says.

A grenade landed very close to the BSF team but in an act of "daredevilry" Deputy Commandant Binu Chandran picked it up and threw it in the direction where it came from.

"This act flushed out the terrorists from their den," it said, adding one of the militants jumped out of the hideout firing his sub-machine gun "wildly".

Constable Balbir Singh, while saving Dubey, took a full burst of AK 47 firing and got killed at the spot and an injured Dubey grappled with the militant who drew a pistol from his pouch and fired, "shattering" the officer's right forearm, the book says.

Dubey took seven bullets in total.

"A heavily bleeding Dubey along with Constable Omvir chased the escaping militant and Gazi Baba got killed in the ensuing gunfight," according to the details in the book.

It also describes how two injured officers including Binu Chandran had to jump 40 feet down on mattresses strewn on the ground, arranged by the BSF cordon, as a terrorist kept firing at the exit staircase.

Soon after these officers landed on the ground, the BSF "lost no time in demolishing the building and killing the terrorist inside it in one act." This finally brought this encounter to an end, the book states.

"This operation broke the back of militancy in the Valley and the secessionist elements took a long time to recover from this blow. The meticulously executed operation reduced the JeM to an army without generals," it concludes.

The book says that Lal Krishna Advani, the then Union home minister, lauded the force saying "it was an exemplary achievement on the part of the BSF and the entire credit for the operation goes to the BSF".

Dubey was decorated with the defence gallantry medal Kirti Chakra, Balbir Singh was awarded the Shaurya Chakra posthumously while Binu Chandran, second-in-command CP Trivedi, Constable Rajesh Bhadoria and Additional DIG K Srinivasan were awarded the President's Police Medal for Gallantry (PPMG).

Head Constables Himanshu Gaur, Hemant Joshi, Manik Chand, Kuldeep Singh and Constables Neel Kamal and Omvir were awarded the Police Medal for Gallantry (PMG).

Then BSF Inspector General (Kashmir Frontier) Late IPS officer Vijay Raman wrote in his 2024 book that with the killing of Gazi Baba "India's Osama was gone".