Salman Ahmad Khan, SC

Biography

Major Salman Ahmad Khan was born on 22 October 1978 in Kanpur district, Uttar Pradesh, to Shri Mushtaq Ahmed Khan and Smt Rashida. From his earliest years he was drawn to a life in uniform, and he received his formative schooling at the Sainik School, Lucknow, where the disciplined ethos of the institution shaped his bearing and resolve. After clearing the requisite examinations he joined the National Defence Academy and was commissioned into the 4 Sikh Battalion in June 1999. Over the following years he earned a reputation as a thoughtful, soft-spoken officer of unflinching courage, and he was subsequently deputed to the 6 Rashtriya Rifles for counter-insurgency duties in the Kashmir Valley. By early May 2005, Major Khan's company was operating in the densely forested Rajwar belt of Kupwara district, where intelligence reports had indicated the movement of a hardcore group of foreign terrorists. On the intervening night of 5-6 May 2005, while leading a search-and-destroy operation near Pazipora village, his team made contact with the infiltrators in close country. Major Khan personally led the assault from the front and engaged the militants at close range. Even after sustaining grievous gunshot wounds to his leg and abdomen, he refused evacuation, lobbing grenades into the terrorists' position and neutralising several militants in fierce hand-to-hand combat. He continued to direct his men until the operation was brought to a decisive close, and succumbed to his injuries on 7 May 2005. For his conspicuous gallantry, exemplary leadership and supreme sacrifice in the face of the enemy, Major Salman Ahmad Khan was posthumously awarded the Shaurya Chakra.