Siege of Skardu

01A garrison at the end of the road

Skardu lies on a wide sandy bend of the Indus, ringed by mountains and reached in those days only by mule tracks from Kargil and Leh. Lt Col Sher Jung Thapa of the Jammu and Kashmir State Forces reached it in February 1948 with a small force and took charge of the post, where Hindu and Sikh families of the town had gathered for safety. The raiders closed round it within days. From then on everything, food, ammunition and the wounded, depended on what could be dropped by air or carried in by columns that rarely got through.

02The relief that never came

Several relief columns set out through the spring and summer. Each was ambushed in the gorges and driven back. The garrison beat off repeated assaults and lived on shrinking rations while the Indian Air Force dropped what it could. By August there was nothing left to hold out with. Thapa surrendered on 14 August 1948. Many of the civilians who had sheltered in the fort were killed after the fall. Thapa himself survived captivity and later received the Maha Vir Chakra for the defence.