Major Harminder Pal Singh, the 31-year-old 6 foot 2 inch lad from Kharar, had been wounded in the left arm but had recovered to engage three militants armed with Kalashnikovs and grenades in an eyeball-to-eyeball encounter in a remote North Kashmir village on April 13.

The 18 Grenadiers Major was shot through the temple by the third militant but not before he had gunned down two of them. Harminder led the commando platoon of his battalion in what has been described as a ``dare-devil'' operation in a congested locality of Sadurkotbala village in Manasbal.

Harminder's commando platoon of 32 men surrounded 12 houses at 1 p.m. in the Khan mohalla after a tip-off about four Hizb-ul-Mujahideen militants. Their presence in the cluster of houses was confirmed by the visage of the villagers. The commandoes surrounded the houses but they didn't know which house the militants were in. ``The visibility was low because of a dust-storm,'' recalls Havildar Vishnu Prasad, the Major's buddy commando.

Harminder was in the lead. Five houses were searched without encountering the militants and Harminder and his five commandoes were approaching the next few through an alley. Then suddenly, the militants opened fire with AK rifles through a ground floor window from a distance of 15 yards. The bullets struck the Major in the left arm. ``He faltered and fell but recovered just enough to take cover behind a rock,'' recalls Vishnu.

Despite his injury, he opened fire at one of the militants who was poking his head out of the second floor window of the house. The AK burst took the militant's head and he came tumbling down. Another one died when the wounded officer managed to lob a grenade through the ground-floor window with his right hand and followed it up with a burst.

The Major's bullet-proof helmet slipped off when he was crawling to cut off the third militant's escape from the main entrance. The surviving militant pierced his temple with bullets. He died at once. Says Lt Gen Krishan Pal, Commander, 15 Corps: ``He was a brave man who led from the front. It was a very difficult operation as the soldiers had to expose themselves in the built-up area to prevent collateral damage to civilian houses and life.''

Adds he: ``The Major's action is significant, particularly in light of the Khalsa tercentenary. He has upheld the spirit of Guru Gobind Singh by rising to fight the evil. Sikh troops are amongst the most gallant and have repeatedly proven themselves.''

``He was an officer who ate with his men and even played cards with them. Our morale used to shoot up because he was always in the forefront whenever there was any danger,'' says Grenadier Satpal, who was wounded in the back by a grenade blast. The Grenadiers revere the Major as a `sant-sipahi' and his loss makes even a tough Haryanvi Jat like Vishnu misty-eyed. ``Our welfare was uppermost in his mind,'' he says. Perhaps valour ran through his blood. His father Harpal Singh also served the Indian Army and retired as a Captain.

The Major's body, wrapped in the tricolour, was cremated with full military honours at the Ram Bagh cremation grounds at Kharar this morning. Major R.K. Pathak, V. Sajiv, Dalwinder Singh, Rajesh Anand, V.S. Chahal and Lieutenant Deepak Vector, led by the Commanding Officer of Artillery Regiment, Colonel Kulwant Singh, were among those present.