Group Captain Group captain is a senior commissioned rank in the Royal Air Force, where it originated, as well as the air forces of many countries that have historical British influence. It is sometimes used as the English translation of an equivalent rank i ...

Kambampati Nachiketa Rao, VM is a retired officer of the

Indian Air Force The Indian Air Force (IAF) is the air arm of the Indian Armed Forces. Its complement of personnel and aircraft assets ranks third amongst the air forces of the world. Its primary mission is to secure Indian airspace and to conduct aerial w ...

. While carrying out an Airstrike on Pakistani positions in

Batalik Batalik is a town in Ladakh, India, located on the upper reaches of the Indus river. It was a focal point in the Kargil War because of its strategic location between Kargil, Leh and Baltistan. In 1999, the Kargil war was fought in this region. ...

sector during the

Kargil War The Kargil War, also known as the Kargil conflict, was fought between India and Pakistan from May to July 1999 in the Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere along the Line of Control (LoC). In India, the conflict is also referr ...

, he was shot down and captured on 27 May 1999 by a Pakistani Unit led by Capt Rao Tahseen Ali. Nachiketa ejected from his

MiG-27 The Mikoyan MiG-27 (russian: Микоян МиГ-27; NATO reporting name: Flogger-D/J) is a variable-sweep ground-attack aircraft, originally built by the Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau in the Soviet Union and later licence-produced in India ...

L and was held in Pakistani custody. He is presently a Captain at

Indigo Airlines Indigo is a deep color close to the color wheel blue (a primary color in the RGB color space), as well as to some variants of ultramarine, based on the ancient dye of the same name. The word "indigo" comes from the Latin word ''indicum'', m ...

Early life

Nachiketa was born on 31 may 1973 to Sri. K. R. K. Sastry and Smt. K. Laxmi. He studied at

Kendriya Vidyalaya The Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan () is a system of central government schools in India that are instituted under the aegis of the Ministry of Education, Government of India. , it has a total of 1,248 schools in India, and three abroad in Moscow ...

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

, and joined the

National Defence Academy The National Defence Academy (NDA) is the joint defence service training institute of the Indian Armed Forces, where cadets of the three services i.e. the Indian Army, the Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force train together before they go on ...

, Khadakwasla.

Kargil War

During the

, Nachiketa was a

Flight Lieutenant Flight lieutenant is a junior commissioned rank in air forces that use the Royal Air Force (RAF) system of ranks, especially in Commonwealth countries. It has a NATO rank code of OF-2. Flight lieutenant is abbreviated as Flt Lt in the India ...

and a

Mikoyan MiG-27 The Mikoyan MiG-27 (russian: Микоян МиГ-27; NATO reporting name: Flogger-D/J) is a variable-sweep ground-attack aircraft, originally built by the Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau in the Soviet Union and later licence-produced in Ind ...

pilot from No. 9 Squadron IAF (Wolfpack) who took part in a strike in the

Sector on 26 May 1999. Armed with 80mm rockets and the aircraft's 30mm cannon, Nachiketa attacked an enemy position. During the operation, the aircraft took a hit from a Pakistan army MANPADS and Nachiketa was forced to eject. After ejecting, Nachiketa evaded immediate capture but after two to three hours, a Pakistani army patrol captured him. Nachiketa continued to fire his service pistol till he ran out of bullets and was arrested. He was taken to a prison in

Rawalpindi Rawalpindi ( or ; Urdu, ) is a city in the Punjab province of Pakistan. It is the fourth largest city in Pakistan after Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad, and third largest in Punjab after Lahore and Faisalabad. Rawalpindi is next to Pakistan's ...

where he was beaten up by Pakistani soldiers until a senior officer intervened. Speaking to NDTV in 2016, Nachiketa said, "The jawans who had captured me were trying to manhandle me and maybe trying to kill me because, for them, I was just an enemy pilot who had fired on their locations from the air... Fortunately, the officer who came was very mature. He realised the situation that I am now a captive and now I need not be handled that way. So he was able to control them, which was a big effort because they were very aggressive at that stage."

Life as a prisoner

Nachiketa remained in the custody of Pakistani forces for eight days. He was first taken to an undisclosed location in the

. After a two-hour wait, he was taken by helicopter to

Skardu , nickname = , motto = , image_skyline = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Gilgit Baltistan#Pakistan , pushpin_label_position ...

. He was interrogated by the Director of Operations of the

Pakistan Air Force , "Be it deserts or seas; all lie under our wings" (traditional) , colours = , colours_label = , march = , mascot = , anniversaries = ...

, Group Captain

Kaiser Tufail Kaiser Tufail is a retired Pakistani fighter pilot. Outside of his military service, Tufail is an active blogger, aviation historian and has delivered motivational speeches at TEDx conferences. Service Kaiser Tufail was commissioned in 1975. ...

. This interrogation was called "very civil" by Tufail, who said it was a casual talk between two officers rather than the captor and a POW. Tufail said his mandate was to inquire the circumstances of the ejection and the mission.

Repatriation

Nachiketa was repatriated to India on 3 June 1999. He was handed over to the

International Committee of the Red Cross The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC; french: Comité international de la Croix-Rouge) is a humanitarian organization which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and it is also a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signato ...

in Pakistan and was subsequently repatriated over the Indian border check post at

Attari Attari, also spelled Atari, is a village of Amritsar district in the Punjab state of India, 3 km from the Indo-Pakistani border at Wagah. It is situated 25 km west of the Sikh holy city of Amritsar, and is the last Indian station on ...

on the Amritsar-to-Lahore road. Nachiketa described his experiences in captivity as "difficult to be described in words" and said he felt "death would have been a better solution".

Subsequent career

Nachiketa was promoted to

and flew

Ilyushin Il-78 The Ilyushin Il-78 (russian: Илью́шин Ил-78; NATO reporting name Midas) is a Soviet/Russian four-engined aerial refueling tanker based on the Il-76 strategic airlifter. Design and development The Soviet Union's first dedicated t ...

mid-air refuelling Aerial refueling, also referred to as air refueling, in-flight refueling (IFR), air-to-air refueling (AAR), and tanking, is the process of transferring aviation fuel from one aircraft (the tanker) to another (the receiver) while both aircraft ...

transport aircraft with No. 78 Squadron IAF stationed at

Agra Agra (, ) is a city on the banks of the Yamuna river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, about south-east of the national capital New Delhi and 330 km west of the state capital Lucknow. With a population of roughly 1.6 million, Agra is ...

. He suffers from long-term back pain due to injury sustained during the parachute landing while he lost his MiG-27 in an engine flame out when he was shot down over Pakistan during the 1999 Kargil conflict

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nachiketa, Kambampati 1973 births Living people Indian Air Force officers Indian aviators People of the Kargil War Indian prisoners of war Kendriya Vidyalaya alumni Recipients of the Vayu Sena Medal Shot-down aviators Prisoners of war held by Pakistan