S. P. P. Thorat

Lieutenant General Shankarrao Pandurang Patil Thorat, KC, DSO (12 August 1906 - 10 August 1992) was a senior General Officer of the Indian Army. He last served as the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief Eastern Command in the lead up to the 1962 Sino-Indian War. He earlier served as the Commander of the Custodian Force of India in the aftermath of the Korean War. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his command of a battalion during WWII.

Early life Shankarrao Thorat was born on 12 August 1906, in Vadgaon village, Kolhapur State, British India. He studied at Sir Parashurambhau College, Pune and then at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from where he commissioned into the British Indian Army as a King's Commissioned Indian Officer (KCIO).

Military career Early career After graduating from Sandhurst, Thorat was placed on the Unattached list for the Indian Army in September 1926 . KCIOs were supposed to serve with a British regiment before being sent to an Indian unit. Thorat was posted to the 2nd battalion, The Middlesex Regiment then stationed at Ahmednagar. After a year-long attachment, in October 1927, he was posted to the 1st battalion, 14th Punjab Regiment (19th Punjabis) in the rank of second lieutenant, with seniority from 30 August 1926. The battalion was in Manzai in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The battalion moved to Aurangabad in early 1928 and Thorat was promoted to the rank of lieutenant in November 1928.

Thorat was posted as the adjutant of the Territorial battalion of the 14th Punjab regiment in October 1931, then at Delhi. After around three years, he returned to his battalion and in 1935 appointed quartermaster of the unit. Shortly thereafter, the battalion moved to Peshawar to participate in the Mohmand campaign. Around the same time, in August, he was promoted to the rank of captain. He spent the next two years as a company commander of the Training battalion in Ferozepur, before being posted to Bannu as the adjutant of 1/14th Punjab.

World War II In 1940, Thorat was selected to attend the Staff College, Quetta. He graduated the next year and was posted to Army headquarters in the Staff Duties directorate. Anxious to be posted to regimental duty, he was transferred to Rajaram Rifles of Kolhapur State where he served for a year. He was promoted major in August 1943. He subsequently moved to 4/14th Punjab which as part of the 114th Indian Infantry Brigade under the 7th Indian Infantry Division played a role in clearing Japanese forces from the Naga Hills.

Thorat participated in small actions with 4/14th Punjab, and after the Battle of Kohima, he was appointed second in command of 9/14 Punjab under the 20th Indian Infantry Division, which was engaged in fighting on the Imphal plains. The commanding officer of 9/14th Punjab went down with dysentery and Thorat temporarily took command of the battalion.

After the battle, 51st Brigade was sent back to India for rest and refit and 2/2nd Punjab came to Pollachi. After a short stay in India, the battalion was slated to go to Malaya as part of Operation Zipper. With the surrender of Japan, the invasion force turned into a peacetime occupation force. Shortly after taking his battalion to Kuantan, Thorat was appointed Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General of the 25th Indian Infantry Division.

In early 1946, 25th Division came back to India to be disbanded. Thorat was promoted to the rank of Colonel and appointed Deputy Director Personnel Services at Army headquarters in Delhi. This was to be a short stint. Later that year, he was appointed Secretary of the National War Academy Committee in the rank of Brigadier, the sixth Indian to be promoted to the rank. During his tenure as Secretary of the Committee, Khadakvasla near Pune was chosen to be the location where the academy would come up. The National War Academy was later renamed National Defence Academy and established in December 1949 in Dehradun before moving to Khadakvasla in 1954. In early 1947, Thorat was appointed Commander of the 161 Brigade in Ranchi.

Post-Independence After the Partition of India, Thorat was posted to new Army headquarters at Red Fort as the Director of Staff Duties and Weapons & Equipment in August 1947. The directorate had to sort out and dispatch weapons, ammunition, vehicles and equipment to the newly-formed Dominion of Pakistan. He noted that the arms and ammunition being sent to Pakistan were used by them in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947 against the Indian forces.

On 31 January 1948, Thorat was promoted to the rank of Major General and appointed General Officer Commanding Delhi Area. As GOC, he commanded the first Independence Day parade in August 1948. The next month, he was appointed GOC East Punjab Area. His major tasks were to consolidate the defences along the Indo-Pak border in the Punjab, to control the refugee movement and aid the civil authorities in settling the evacuee properties. He had four brigades and three sub-areas under him.

Custodian Force of India In March 1950, Thorat was appointed Chief of the General Staff. This was a surprising appointment since the CGS was the senior Principal Staff Officer (PSO) at army headquarters and usually filled by a senior lieutenant general. Thorat was junior to other PSOs like the Adjutant General, Quartermaster General and Master-General of the Ordnance (India). The Directors of Military Training and Signals, part of the General Staff branch, both British officers, were themselves senior to Thorat. During his tenure as CGS, the Indian States Forces were integrated with the Indian Army.

Custodian Force of India

After a three-year tenure, Thorat was appointed General Officer Commanding Custodian Force of India (CFI). In early 1953, in the aftermath of the Korean War, the United Nations had requested India to undertake a peace mission on its behalf to Korea. The CFI was to be the executive agent of the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission, which was to be headed by Lieutenant General K. S. Thimayya. The force would take custody of all the Prisoners of war of both sides. The CFI had an infantry brigade with four battalions, one company of medium machine guns and a field ambulance apart from the Force headquarters, totalling around 5000 troops.

CFI began to move to Korea in August 1953, established a base christened 'Hindnagar' and took custody of all POWs by September, 27000 in all. Shortly thereafter, on 25 September, mass demonstrations were staged in all compounds housing the POWs. In compound D-31, after a talk by Thorat, Major HS Grewal, a Chinese interpreter was snatched by the crowd. Inspite of being heavily outnumbered by the prisoners armed with improvised weapons, Thorat re-entered the compound to rescue Major Grewal. While speaking with the agitated POWs, CFI troops surrounded the compound and were about to fire on the prisoners. Restraining his troops, Thorat induced the POWs to release Major Grewal. For this incident, Thorat was awarded the Ashoka Chakra (Class II) (later renamed Kirti Chakra).

By early 1954, the CFI's mandate was completed and the force returned to India. In May that year, Thorat disbanded the CFI and was appointed GOC 5th Infantry Division in Jhansi. He requested command of this division since most of the units of CFI belonged to it. Early next year, he moved the division from Jhansi to Ferozepur in Punjab, as part of XI Corps. A few months later, he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General and appointed GOC XI Corps.

GOC-in-C Eastern Command Thorat took over the eastern command in 1957. At the time the headquarters of the eastern command was based in Lucknow. It was only in 1959, following incidents such as the Longju incident, when border defence was shifted to the military. Accordingly, Thorat made an assessment of the requirements needed to plug vulnerabilities and repel a Chinese invasion. In October 1959, Thorat's plan was sent to General Thimayya who in turn showed it to the Defence Minister VK Krishna Menon. Menon dismissed the report. Exercise Lal Qila was conducted on 17 March 1960 at the Eastern Command Headquarters under Lieutenant General Thorat. It was another attempt to show the serious vulnerabilities in the eastern sector. It detailed the threat from China and what India needed to do to plug vulnerabilities.

Dates of rank