Nyima Tenzin, The Unsung Tibetan Hero of India's Special Frontier Force

People of Leh came together to pay tribute to a Tibetan jawan, Nyima Tenzin, who attained martyrdom recently along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Hours after the Indian Army issued the press statement about his death, the Tibetan community in Ladakh came together to pay tribute to the soldier of the '7 Vikas' battalion.

The tragic demise of the Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) points that India deploys its secret Tibetan paramilitary force along the LAC with China, however for the first time in recent years. The history of deployment of SFF troopers in Ladakh began post Chinese incursions in May this year.

The SFF has played an important role in multiple military operations — from the 1971 India-Pakistan war to the 1999 Kargil battle — but has largely functioned under the shadows.

Reports of Tenzin Nyima’s death in a landmine blast, and the emergence of images showing his body wrapped in the Indian and Tibetan flags, brought focus on an extremely secretive security force comprising trained mountain warriors.


Recalling Special Frontier Force (SFF) company leader Nyima Tenzin had lost his life on August 31 when he stepped on a landmine laid in 1962 in Gurung Hill in Chushul. His body was later driven to his house in the Sonamling Tibetan Refugee settlement in Leh.

“He gave his life for #India, out of Love for #Tibet,” Tibetan activist Tenzin Namgyal posted on Twitter. “My salute to Nyima Tenzin!” tweeted former Indian Army chief General Ved Malik, who recalled the valour of the personnel of the SFF (a.k.a Vikas Battalions) during the Kargil War.

"Nothing can be more humiliating to China than India's use of its Special Frontier Force comprising mainly Tibetan exiles to foil the latest PLA incursion," eminent strategic affairs analyst Brahma Chellaney commented on the microblogging website.

Special Frontier Force

The SFF is an enigmatic paramilitary unit manned by ethnic Tibetans and has Vikas battalions number from one to seven. It is operated under a covert organisation called the Directorate General of Security (DGS). Both the DGS and SFF were set up in 1962 in the closing stages of the border war with China to fight a guerrilla war inside the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

The special force comes under the direct administrative control of the cabinet secretariat and the PMO, and fights alongside the Indian Army in the toughest terrains.

The SFF draws its volunteer recruits from a 150,000-strong ethnic Tibetan diaspora, settled mostly in India. Officered by the Indian Army, it has six battalions with nearly 5,000 troopers. Curiously, accounts of its creation are anecdotal as no official records have been published.

If reports are to be believed, then the special force has played a key role in stopping Pakistani forces at Chittagong during the Bangladesh war of 1971, Operation Bluestar in 1984, in securing the Siachen glacier in 1984 and the Kargil war against Pakistan in 1999.

The first public acknowledgement of its existence reportedly came after SFF personnel participated in an abortive operation with the CIA in 1965 to place a nuclear-powered device on Mount Nanda Devi to monitor China’s nuclear weapons tests.