Says Maj Gopal Mitra who survived Operation Vijay but lost his vision during counter-insurgency operation in J&K. He is now a global disability activist
Says Maj Gopal Mitra who survived Operation Vijay but lost his vision during counter-insurgency operation in J&K. He is now a global disability activist
Before losing his eyesight during a counter-insurgency operation, Major Gopal Mitra had seen one of the most gory pictures of the Kargil war.
A soldier carrying his intestines with splinters in his body to the nearest base hospital and another who lifted his left hand that was severed from his body after coming under an explosives attack, in search of paramedics.
Commissioned into the 15th Mahar in June 1995, Maj Mitra's assignments took him to one of the most difficult terrains in Assam where he fought ULFA militants and to Jammu Kashmir where the Pakistan-supported terrorist groups were particularly targeting Indian troops.
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Indefatigable: Maj Gopal Mitra |
On May 13, 1999, Major Mitra's unit had just returned from operation Rhino in Assam, and the entire battalion stationed at Ranikhet in Uttaranchal was mobilised for Operation Vijay at the Line of Control (LOC). "Kargil war was a learning experience," says Maj Mitra, who received the President's gallantary award for his bravery in Assam on January 26, 2000.u00a0u00a0
A month later after the war got over Maj Mitra and his men were deployed for providing security over the Baltal route for Amaranth Yatra and later for various anti-terrorist operations. On November 3, 2000 Maj Mitra got intelligence inputs about a huge consignment of arms in cache in the jungles of Rajwar, Jammu and Kashmir. He led his troops on the operation and on the third day of their search, the hideout was spotted. After hand grenades, AK-47 rifles and radio sets were seized from the hideout, Mitra and his 15 men were laying out strategies to destroy the hide out, when militants ambushed the party and blew the hideout with a remote control Improvised Explosive Device (IED).
"I was struggling to breathe and could feel a sure death," said Mitra.u00a0
A critically injured Maj Mitra was airlifted to the Srinagar base hospital with burn injuries and wounded eyes and face.
On the third day, Mitra was shifted to the Army's Research and Referral hospital in Delhi and then to Shankar Netralay, a private eye clinic in Chennai, where doctors removed his left eye and have so far conducted four surgeries on his right eye, but could not restore his vision.
He underwent several reconstructive surgeries and received more than 60 stitches on his face and spent nearly two years in and out of hospital. During this period the Army sent him to the National Institute for the Visually Handicapped (NIVH) in Dehradun for a rehabilitation programme. At the National Association for the Blind (NAB) in Delhi he also received training in using JAWS (Job Access with Speech), a software which enables persons with visual impairment to use regular computers by vocalizing the keystrokes and reading out the text on the screen.
Maj Mitra admits that life has changed for him without vision, but his spirit is intact.
Stroke of luckIn 2003, Maj Gopal Mitra married Sreerupa, who is the daughter of Capt. (Retd) Jayanta Kumar Sengupta who got visually impaired in the 1965 Indo-Pak War. Sreerupa, a graduate of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences was then working with a development organization.
Healing touch
Apart from armed operations, Maj Gopal Mitra was also involved in various development projects and disaster responses. He decided to take up a career in development and he undertook an MA in Social Work at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai between 2003-2005. Gopal then went on to pursue an MSc in Development Management at the London School of Economics (LSE) from 2005-2006. Associated with Leonard Cheshire Disability (LCD), an international NGO for the disabled, Maj Mitra was the Chief Rapporteur on Poverty at a Global Conference on Disability organized by UN Economic Commission on Africa, which was held at Addis Ababa. He moved to LCD's central office in London at the end of 2008 as the International Campaigns Coordinator. Though based at London, his current work allows him the opportunity to travel widely in Asia and in Africa and to work closely with Youth with Disabilities.
