Major Sharanjit Pal Singh Waraich

Major Sharanjit Pal Singh Waraich hailed from Punjab and was born on 13 Apr 1941. Son of a Police Officer, he had inclination to serve in the Armed Forces since his younger days. After completing his education he joined the army as a commissioned officer. He was commissioned into the 15 Punjab Battalion of the Punjab Regiment, an Infantry Regiment with a long history of gallantry and battle honours. He soon developed into a tough soldier and fine officer who commanded the respect of his seniors and men as well.

After serving for few years, he got married to Ms Rupinder Kaur daughter of then a serving Army Officer Brigadier Bant Singh and the couple had two daughters Simmi and Neetu. By the year 1971, he had been promoted to the rank of Major and had served in various challenging operational areas. In the later part of 1971 when the war clouds appeared on the horizon, his unit 15 Punjab got deployed on the western front.

Battle of Hussainiwala (Indo-Pak war):  03-05 Dec 1971

During Indo-Pak war in 1971,  Maj SPS Waraich ’s unit 15 Punjab was deployed in Hussainiwala village in Ferozepur district of Punjab.  The Indian enclave of Hussainiwala lay west of the Sutlej along the Ferozepur-Lahore highway. It covered about 7.5 hectares and ran in a parabola from the rail and road bridge towards Shamoke in a northwesterly direction. The enclave was very important economically as it formed a part of the Hussainiwala head works that fed the Gang Canal system which irrigated the arid district of Ganganagar and Karanpur. Militarily, the road-rail bridge in the area provided a readymade bridgehead across the Sutlej to support offensive operations in developing a thrust towards Lahore.

15 Punjab with Lt Col Shastry as its commanding officer was functioning under the operational control of 7 Infantry Division. The unit was moved to the Hussainiwalla enclave in February 1971 and was given the task of defending it, particularly the headworks. Three companies of the Border Security Force in that area were placed under the battalion’s operational command to hold border outposts and generally augment its man-power resources. On  3 Dec 1971, a routine tea party was organized at battalion headquarters in the irrigation bungalow to bid farewell to the retiring Subedar major. All the officers and junior commissioned officers, except the minimum manpower required for vigilance in the enclave were in attendance. Unknown to the gathering at the party, Pakistan 106 Infantry Brigade had concentrated its attacking troops close to the barrier and the localities defended by the perimeter company.  The Pakistani plan envisaged a three-pronged attack, with one thrust along the main road axis through the barrier, the second from the south towards the mouth of the bridge over the perimeter-defended locality, and the third from the northwesterly direction overrunning the BOPs.

Major SPS Waraich is survived by his wife Smt Rupinder Kaur and daughters Simmi & Neetu. 

• On 04-12-1971/05-12-1971, a radio broadcast of radio Pakistan said in Urdu, “ Major Waraich hamari hiraasat mein hain.” ie Maj Waraich is in our custody. It also said 2 JCOs and 34 jawans of 15 Punjab were held by them. These men returned but the 2 officers did not.
• Mr Ashwini Kumar, then IG of the Border Security Force who had gone to Munich in with the Indian Hockey team found out through Col AI Dara, then manager of the Pakistan Hockey team at the Munich Olympics as a personal favour to him at the Munich Olympics in 1972 that Major Waraich was being held in Dargai jail, NWFP. Col Dara got this information from Gen Riaz, Governor Balochistan. Major SPS Waraich's name was first in the list of 40 Missing defence personnel (later expanded to 54) by Shri Samarendu Kundu , Minister of State for external Affairs in 1979 in the Lok Sabha in reply to a question number 6803 by Amarsinh Pathwa.
• Col Habib Tanwar wrote a book in 2015 ” Kaiser e Hind – Battle of Husainiwala” where he said Maj Waraich was captured by a Havildar Khizar and later killed in friendly fire. However, on enquiring from him directly , he said he had only heard this and did not even know the name but correlated when asked about a Maj SPS Waraich in 1972 after the war by Maj Lehsarab Khan. Hence this account is debatable.