Onkar Singh Kalkat

At the time of partition of India, Major Kalkat was the Brigade Major of the Bannu Frontier Brigade Group, in present-day Pakistan, under the Command of Brigadier C. P. Murry, a British officer;[lower-alpha 1] who were waiting to go back to India and England, respectively. It was then in August 1947 that Kalkat stumbled upon information related to Pakistan's invasion of Kashmir, Operation Gulmarg, that was to commence in October.[4][5] Kalkat was authorised to open letters for Brigadier CP Murry in his absence. On 20 August 1947, Kalkat opened one such letter from General Frank Walter Messervy, and found attached the plans for Operation Gulmarg.[6]

Kalkat informed Brigadier Murry of the letter, who in turn told him to tell no one about the information in Pakistan as it could get him killed. However, soon afterwards, Kalkat was put under house arrest by the Pakistani Army suspecting that something was up. Kalkat escaped his captors, left Mir Ali Mirali, reached Ambala in Indian Punjab and, on 18 October 1947, headed to Delhi in a goods train. The following day he met senior military officials including Brigadier Kalwant Singh, Col. P. N. Thapar (then the Director of Military Operations) and Sardar Baldev Singh, the Defence Minister, and told them about what he knew of the impending attack. But no one took Major Kalkat seriously enough to take action and the "British-staffed intelligence directorate paid no heed to it".[7][8][9] At that time, the "impending invasion" was being reported from multiple locations.[6]

Before leaving Pakistan, Major Kalkat, with the help of his Muslim friends and the District Commissioner of Mianwali district, had got his family out of Pakistan and sent to India.[6] While Major Kalkat was searching for his family in East Punjab, the Operation Gulmarg began. It was then that the Indian authorities realised their mistake. Major Kalkat was traced only on 24 October. He was taken to Prime Minister Nehru who shouted at everyone for not taking an officer in a responsible position seriously:[4][10][11]

I was traced from Amritsar on 24 October 1947 and rushed to Delhi. The next day (25 October 1947) I was rushed to the presence of Pandit Nehru. He listened to me with rapt attention for fifteen minutes. He was most upset.... He blamed them for having remained impervious to my information. Nehru shouted that an officer in responsible position ought to have been trusted, and some action should have been taken on my initial report.

— Major–General Onkar Singh Kalkat (Retd), Far-flung Frontiers (page 37)

In 1983, Kalkat wrote a book called Far-flung Frontiers in which he described his experiences. The foreword of the book was written by Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, then a Brigadier, who agreed with Kalkat's narrative.[6][11]