Flight Lieutenant Nachiketa (left) and Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja

NEW DELHI: Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman is fortunate that Pakistan has owned up that he is in their custody because there have been instances in the past when Indian military personnel were brutally tortured and killed after being captured by Pakistani forces.

Two prominent examples of such barbaric treatment were Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja and Captain Saurabh Kalia during the 1999 Kargil conflict. Just like Varthaman, Ahuja was flying a MiG-21 when his fighter was hit by a surface-to-air missile on May 27 during the conflict.

Ahuja was trying to trace a lost MiG-27, being flown by Flight Lieutenant K Nachiketa , when he himself had to eject after his jet was hit by the missile. Pakistan later returned Ahuja’s body but it bore point-blank bullet wounds, indicating he was captured alive and then shot dead.

Ahuja, whose death was called a cold-blooded murder, was conferred with a Vir Chakra posthumously on August 15, 1999. The present IAF chief Air Chief Marshal B S Dhanoa, incidentally, was the commanding officer of the 17 Squadron, in which Ahuja was a flight commander during the 1999 conflict.

Nachiketa, who was then 26, in turn, was taken prisoner by the Pak Army, tortured in private and publicly paraded on Pakistan TV. Later handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross, Nachiketa shifted to flying transport aircraft like AN-32s and IL-76s before taking premature retirement from the IAF over a year ago.

The 22-year-old Kalia, in turn, had been posted to the Kargil heights immediately after getting commissioned into the 4 Jat Regiment. In May 1999, Captain Kalia was out on a patrol in the Kaksar area of Kargil along with five other soldiers. Well within the Indian side of the LoC, they were caught by the Pakistan Army intruders.

They were kept in captivity for over 22 days and subjected to brutal torture as became evident when their bodies – limbs chopped off, private parts mutilated, eyes gouged out, multiple cigarette burns -- were later handed over by Pakistan Army on June 9, 1999.

