Sagat Singh, PVSM

Biography

Lieutenant General Sagat Singh was born on 14 July 1919 at Kusumdesar in the princely state of Bikaner, in what is today the Churu district of Rajasthan. He began his service with the Bikaner State Forces and saw action in the Middle East during the Second World War, before being absorbed into the Indian Army and commissioned into the 3rd Gorkha Rifles. In December 1961, commanding the 50th Parachute Brigade, he led the advance into Goa and took Panaji, bringing four and a half centuries of Portuguese rule on the western coast to an end. His defining hour came a decade later. As General Officer Commanding of IV Corps in the 1971 war, he drove his formations across the Meghna — a river a mile wide and held to be uncrossable — by improvising India's first heliborne operation, lifting his troops over the water in relays when the bridges were gone. The manoeuvre unhinged the defence of East Pakistan and opened the road to Dhaka, and his corps was the first to reach the city. He was decorated with the Param Vishisht Seva Medal in 1970 and the Padma Bhushan in 1972. He retired in 1974 and died on 26 September 2001, at the age of eighty-two. He is remembered as one of the finest fighting generals the Indian Army has produced — an officer who commanded from the front, trusted his subordinates, and understood that in war the greater risk is usually caution.