Operation Vijay: The Regimental Medical Officer who chose to return to action

3 min readPuneJul 26, 2026 05:26 AM IST Brigadier Jyoti Prakash; (right) Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Krishna Swaminathan with Colonel Satish Mallik. (Arul Horizon)During Operation Vijay in 1999, Captain (now Brigadier) Jyoti Prakash served as the Regimental Medical Officer of an elite PARA unit in the Mushkoh Valley. A paratrooper, he had volunteered for PARA and in the thick of war this soldier-doctor sustained a splinter injury at Bakharwal. For most that would have been reason enough to recover at the field surgical centre and remain away from further danger. The captain chose otherwise. As the nation observes Kargil Vijay Diwas on July 26, the 55-year-old Brig Jyoti Prakash, Prof and Head, Department of Psychiatry at Armed Forces Medical College, Pune, shared how important it was to ‘