Sepoy Samundare Vikas

Sepoy Samundare Vikas hailed from Ganjpur village of Dharur tehsil in Beed district of Maharashtra and was born on 5th Jan 1990. He wanted to serve in the Armed Forces since his childhood and eventually joined the Indian Army after completing his education after completing his school education from his native place. and was recruited into the Corps of Engineers, the important combat support arm of the Indian Army.

 After serving for few years with his parent unit, he was deputed to serve with the 51 RR unit, deployed in J & K for counter-insurgency operations.

During Jan 2017, Sepoy Samundare Vikas's unit was deployed in the Gurez sector of North Kashmir along the LOC. The AOR(Area of Responsibility) of the unit spanned over remote rugged mountainous terrain with extreme weather conditions, especially in the winter season. The troops were deployed on various forward posts and often undertook patrol to monitor the area in between the manned posts. Also, heavy snowfall often blocked the roads and hampered the movement of troops which necessitated frequent clearance operations. On 25 Jan 2017, a horrific avalanche struck 51 RR battalion Army camp, which took Sep Samundare Vikas and many of his comrades off guard. The avalanche hit the post at Neeru village located in the Tulail area, 25 km away from Gurez town in North Kashmir. The place located along the LOC normally remained cut off by road in winter. The avalanche hit the area a few hundred meters away from the HQs of 51 RR unit and trapped the soldiers, who were on patrol.

The soldiers invariably faced extreme risks in manning the inhospitable terrain under extreme weather conditions. Avalanches usually took place due to the accumulation of snow and were triggered by morning sunlight. In other cases, when the slope of accumulated snow was between 60 to 80 degrees, the instability led to an avalanche. Although the Army had a unit of the Snow Avalanche Study Establishment (SASE) in Jammu and Kashmir, with several observatories at various locations to issue warnings and alerts to the Army formations and units, it could not detect this avalanche. The magnitude and suddenness of the avalanche did not give any time to Sep Samundare Vikas and other soldiers of the 51 RR battalion to take any defensive measures.  As a result, the soldiers got buried under tons of snow and it was very difficult to locate them. 

A massive rescue operation was launched by the Army which continued for several hours to locate and rescue the trapped soldiers. The teams of Army undertook rescue operations under extreme weather conditions but could not save the lives of Sep Samundare Vikas and thirteen other soldiers. Besides Sep Samundare Vikas, the other martyred brave-hearts included Nk Ajit Singh, Nb Sub Aram Singh Gurjar, Hav Vijay Kumar Shukla, Sep Sanju Suresh Khandare, Sep Anand Gawai, Sep Sandeep Kumar D P, Sep Sunil Patel, Sep Nagaraju Mamidi, Sep Devender Kumar Soni, Sep Elaverson B, Sep Azad Singh, Sep Sundara Pandi, and Craftsman Ankur Singh. Sep Samundare Vikas was a valiant soldier who laid down his life in the line of his duty.

Sep Samundare Vikas is Survived by his mother Smt Samundare Jandvi Pandurang.