Battle of Point 4875
The Battle of Point 4875 took place from 4 to 7 July 1999 and was a pivotal military offensive carried out by the 13th Jammu and Kashmir Rifles battalion in the Kargil War of 1999.[1] The next assignment for Lt Col YK Joshi's battalion was to capture Point 4875, a strategically important peak located in the Mushkoh Valley.[1] Since the feature dominated the National Highway 1 completely from Dras to Matayan, it became imperative for the Indian Army to capture Point 4875.However at one point, a strategically located machine gun halted the advance, and by first light the troops were still 50 meters short of the target.[4] The Indian victory would not have been complete without the capture of 'Area Flat Top',[11] an adjacent peak and part of Pakistani defences on Point 4875.[14] A shell hit Area Flat Top, seriously injuring Captain Naveen Nagappa who was shooting at the advancing Pakistani soldiers.[4][13] It was at this stage where it became imperative for Indian troops to destroy this Pakistani post, located north of Point 4875, from where fire was coming as otherwise the situation could become worse.[4] En route to the top, Batra spotted a Pakistani machine gun position firing at the trapped Indian soldiers.[20] Batra, accompanied by Subedar Raghunath Singh and Major Bhat, his artillery observation officer, took out a patrol to recce a route to re-inforce Naveen from a flank.He sustained grievous injuries in the process, yet he continued his charge, with supporting fire from the rest of the patrol, and upon reaching the very narrow entrance of the sangar and taking the enemy by complete surprise, he killed 5 Pakistani soldiers in a close-quarter battle.Batra was shot in the chest by an enemy sniper from very close range in the process of rescuing this soldier, and a split-second later, by a splinter from an RPG which hit him in the head.