Kanika Bhardwaj

Biography

Captain Kanika Bhardwaj was born on 12th July 1988 in New Delhi. A happy-go-lucky child with a no-nonsense attitude, she completed her schooling from Hans Raj Model School, Punjabi Bagh, before pursuing a four-year B.Tech degree. Her ambition had always been to join the Air Force as a fighter pilot, but a pelvic injury sustained a few months into her studies put that dream out of reach. Undeterred, she turned her sights to the Army and cracked the SSB (Technical Entry) in her very first attempt. She passed out of the Officers Training Academy with the 2013 batch and was commissioned into the Corps of Electronics and Mechanical Engineers (EME), the arm responsible for the design, development, trial, inspection and refit of the Army's weapon systems and equipment. She was posted to Kashmir for her first assignment — an irony not lost on her, for she was a Kashmiri Pandit whose family roots lay in the Mirpur district of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. In 2015 she had the distinction of taking part in the first-ever all-women contingent march by the armed forces at the 66th Republic Day parade, where US President Barack Obama was the chief guest. Remembered by her batchmates as "always a phone call away" and by her Commanding Officer as a brave, highly motivated officer who led from the front, Captain Kanika once single-handedly took charge of a tense late-night security incident at her unit, calmly and professionally handling a frightened civilian who had been challenged near the officers' mess. On 17th January 2016, while shifting base to take up her next posting, she was killed in a road accident, bringing to a tragic end the service of a committed soldier and a fine officer. In her honour, a public park in Paschim Vihar, Delhi, was named after her on 24th February 2022.