Mandar Madhukar Bokil

Biography

Captain Mandar Madhukar Bokil was born in 1977 in Pune, Maharashtra. He passed out of the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, as a Lieutenant in December 2000 at the age of 23 and was commissioned into the 18 Engineer Regiment of the Corps of Engineers, one of the Army's oldest arms. His unit specialised in building bridges and tracks to provide mobility to the forces. By 2005, having completed nearly four years of service, he had carried out numerous operational engineering tasks in support of combat operations. In June 2005, the Army was tasked with rebuilding four bridges — at Kharo, Khab, Leo and Akpa — that had been washed away in the Pareechu lake floods along National Highway 22, the lifeline of the Kinnaur and Lahaul-Spiti districts. On 8 September 2005, Captain Bokil, along with his commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Amardeep Singh and 40 other soldiers, began the reconstruction of the bridge at Kharo. After the first phase was successfully completed, the men were laying wooden slabs over the iron beams of the 80-tonne, 60-metre span when the bridge suddenly collapsed at the centre, likely due to a technical fault, plunging most of the soldiers into the Sutlej river. Captain Bokil laid down his life in the line of duty at the age of 28.