Srinagar: For a few brief moments, the stars shooting through the sky over Badami Bagh glowed brighter than the morning sun, ripping through the air with great peals of thunder. Four kilometres away, at the journalist’s home in the Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) hostel, a small group of reporters wondered if a war had broken out, or the historic Corps headquarters at the Badami Bagh cantonment had been attacked. Fire raged inside the complex for hours.

That morning of 29 March, 1994, Director-General of Military Intelligence (DGMI) Lieutenant-General E.W.Fernandes had decided to visit the Army’s 2 Field Ordnance Depot—the prosaically-named museum complex inside Badami Bagh, a fascinating trove of weapons, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), pamphlets, photographs and books re

See Full Page