Indomitable human spirit

He is in coma and has been placed on ventilator support at Army Referal and Research Hospital in Delhi Cantt. For six days, Lance Naik Koppad was buried under 25 feet of ice in temperatures close to minus 40 degrees. 

Soon after he was located, Army Commander Northern Command Lt Gen DS Hooda said, “Lance Naik Hanumanthappa has been found alive. He is critical but all attempts are being made to evacuate him to RR hospital in the morning. We hope the miracle continues. Pray with us.”

Koppad was flown to Delhi in an Air Force plane on Tuesday morning and was admitted to the Army’s Research & Referral (RR) Hospital. “Koppad condition is extremely critical and is expected to have a stormy course in the next 24 to 48 hours due to complications caused by rewarming and establishment of blood flow to the cold parts of the body,” the official said.

Rescue teams which were working round the clock miraculously found Lance Naik Koppad alive in an “arctic tent” or a fibre-reinforced hut that was buried deep in ice late on Monday night. Koppad was trapped since February 3, when a wall of ice a kilometer wide and 800 metres high came crashing down on his army post, killing nine of his colleagues.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who visited him at the hospital in Delhi, tweeted: “No words are enough to describe the endurance & indomitable spirit of Lance Naik Hanumanthappa. He is an outstanding soldier.”

A junior commissioned officer (JCO) and nine other ranks of the Madras Regiment were buried after an avalanche hit their post at an altitude of 19,000 feet in Siachen in the glacier sector of the Laddakh region on Wednesday. 

The rescue, involving heavy equipment that had to be assembled at the top, became particularly challenging because the snow had turned into hard chunks of ice. In temperatures between minus 40 and 25 degrees, rescue teams had to battle frequent blizzards and work through low visibility.

The Siachen Glacier located at the northern tip of Kashmir is the world’s highest and coldest battlefield. More soldiers have died here because of the weather and difficult terrain than in battle. At least 869 officers and soldiers have been killed there since the mid-1980s.

This is the second big operation carried by the soldiers across India and Pakistan since 2012. The deadly mountains buried 129 Pakistani soldiers and 11 civilians on 7 April, 2012, when a massive avalanche struck the Pakistani military headquarters at Gayari, 30 kilometres west of the glacier terminus. The operation, to rescue the dead bodies, lasted for months and Pakistan was forced to invite international experts to help them.