Vir Chakra (VrC)

On 04 July 1999 during 'Operation Vijay', Delta Company of 17 JAT under Major Deepak Rampal was tasked to capture Whale-Back, part of Point 4875. Whale-Back, a dominating feature, had complete observation over the Mushkoh Valley Drass and Matayan and observed artillery fire was being directed by the enemy. Attack commenced at 2200 hours on 04 July 1999 with Major Rampal leading from the front. Despite accurate enemy artillery, mortars and small arms fire, he motivated his men to advance 

Despite initial causalities of leading platoon commander and five other ranks, Major Rampal quickly reorganised and resumed advance. Three enemy positions were located on the objective. He moved his platoon from sangar to sangar after a fierce close combat on the objective for four hours, killed five enemy soldiers and cleared three enemy medium machine gun sangars.

By this action the objective was captured by 0330 hours on 05 July 1999. Enemy massed 30 to 40 troops opposite Whale-Back and attempted a counter attack. Major Rampal kept his cool, employed artillery, mortars and automatics to repulse the enemy counterattack. Two more attempts were made to counter-attack on the same day, which too were successfully repulsed by him. This led to the final capture of Pimple complex and killing of five Pakistani soldiers and recovery of twenty-eight weapons.

Major Deepak Rampal with exemplary courage, grit and determination and with utter disregard to his personal safety captured the objective and repulsed three enemy counter attacks.