Of Dud Artillery Shells And Bomb Blasts

COLUMN: LOCATION DIARY
Photos: Major Ravi; Mohanlal in 'Keerthi Chakra' 
It was a cold morning in March, 2006. In the village of Magam, Major Ravi sipped a cup of tea, while an unit member of the film, 'Keerthi Chakra', brought him the day's English newspaper. Major Ravi was taken aback when, on the front page itself, he saw a news item: 'Major Ravi is back in Kashmir. But this time, he does not have a AK-47. Instead, he has a camera.' 
Major Ravi felt worried. “Usually, these newspapers are read by militants,” he says. “So, this meant that they knew we were there.”
“We put cameras at four points,” says Major Ravi. One camera was just ten metres away. Major Ravi stood next to the soldiers as they fired a round. The shell, instead of travelling a distance of one kilometre, fell two feet away from the camera.
So Major Ravi asked for a petrol bomb to be placed inside. “I told the Tamil workers to put six litres of petrol,” says Major Ravi. Two cameras were placed at strategic positions. However, when the bomb burst, there was a huge sheet of fire. Two crew members got injured, while a young actor called Shaan, who played a commando, has his entire hand burned. He was rushed to hospital.
“One crew member told me that he saw the Tamilian running, at full-speed, by the side of the highway towards Vytilla,” says Major Ravi. “Three days later, he returned, grabbed my legs, and begged forgiveness. By then my anger had cooled down. Nevertheless, I warned him never to do such dangerous mistakes again.” 
(The New Indian Express, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode)