Mukund Varadarajan

Mukund Varadarajan was born on 12 April 1983 in a Tamil Iyengar family to R. Varadarajan and Geetha Varadarajan in Kozhikode district, Kerala, India. His family hailed from Paruthipattu in Avadi near Chennai. He was the youngest of the three siblings. His father worked in a public sector bank in Kerala, and the family shifted to Tambaram in Chennai during Mukund's childhood. Mukund received his Bachelor of Commerce from Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswathi Viswa Mahavidyalaya at Kanchipuram and a diploma in journalism from the Madras Christian College. Mukund worked at a Business Process Outsourcing center for sometime before he decided to join the Indian Armed Forces. His grandfather Raghavachari and two of his uncles also served in the Indian Army, which motivated him to take up a career with the armed forces. He married Indhu Rebecca Varghese in 2009, and the couple have a daughter. == Military career ==

Early career Mukund joined the Officers Training Academy in Chennai in 2004. He served at the Infantry school in Mhow, Madhya Pradesh and was part of a United Nations Mission in Lebanon. He was promoted to the rank of captain on 28 July 2011. He was later promoted to major on 18 October 2012, and was deputed to the 44th Battalion of the Rashtriya Rifles in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir in December 2012. While several Indian army men were hurt in the attack, Mukund killed Baba with the help of his army colleague Sepoy Vikram Singh. One of them was Altaf Wani, who had replaced Altaf Baba as the local commander of the terrorists in the region. The terrorists had earlier attacked the electoral officers during the polling for the 2014 Indian general election, and killed one of the officers. At 17:30 hrs, Mukund lobbed a improvised explosive device into the terrorists' hiding, and one of the terrorists was killed in the return gunfire by the armed soldiers. The other two terrorists which included Wani, returned fire, which injured Mukund in his forearm. They moved to one of the outhouses in the compound, before one of them was killed using a grenade by Mukund. Wani hid behind a stack of wooden logs, and returned fire, which killed Vikram Singh. Mukund and Wani engaged in a firefight, which resulted in both the men being shot. Wani was killed and the bodies of the three dead men were recovered later from the site. Death and aftermath Mukund had sustained three bullet injuries during the Qazipatri operation, and was bleeding profusely. He told one of his team members that he and Vikram managed to kill Wani, but Vikram was killed in the process. He also remarked that, "And I got hit too. I can’t believe it." As per Dabas' instructions, Mukund was to be moved to the government hospital in Pulwama for initial treatment, and was to be moved to Srinagar later for further treatment. However, Mukund succumbed to his injuries en route to the hospital. His body was moved to Chennai on 27 April, and was kept at the Officers Training Academy for public viewing. His body was cremated with full state honours on 28 April. Ranks == Legacy ==

from the Indian president in January 2015 After Mukund's funeral, Dabas wrote a letter to Mukund's wife, in which he remarked: On 15 August 2014, Mukund was posthumously awarded the Ashoka Chakra, India's highest peacetime gallantry award. It was presented to his wife Indhu by then-Indian president Pranab Mukherjee on 26 January 2015. His award commendation read as "(for showing) exemplary leadership skills, raw courage and swift action." It was further cited that: On 1 June 2015, a statue of Mukund was unveiled at the premises of the Officers Training Academy in Chennai. The 2015 Malayalam film Picket 43 was dedicated to Mukund, who had been assisting the film crew during production. In 2024, a Tamil film, Amaran, a biopic based on Mukund's life, was released, with Sivakarthikeyan portraying Mukund in the film. ==References==