1971 War: Subedar who defused bombs with his own hands

Within days in the winter of 1971, the people of Zira, a small village in Punjab’s Ferozepur district near the India-Pakistan border, had learnt how to identify a bomb — a large metal block with markings of Pakistan’s ordnance factory or those of the UK and US. On December 3, Pakistan had launched an airstrike on India that set off a war and would eventually lead to the creation of Bangladesh. Bombs up to 1,000 pounds were dropped on areas along the India-Pakistan border in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. But when seven of these did not go off, Zira descended into panic.

Sewa Singh, a subedar with the Bomb Disposal Platoon of the Bombay Engineers Group, remembers being called in. But they were low on time, resources and intel. Sewa knew he had to act fast. “My unit defused seven bombs, five of which I disarmed with my own hands,” he said — bombs that could have gone off any moment. The village of Zira and the hundreds who called it home were saved.