Former Indian Navy chief Admiral Ramdas passes away at 90
text_fields
New Delhi: Admiral Laxminarayan Ramdas, who was the Indian Navy Chief and veteran of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation war, passed away at the age of 90 on Friday.
During the 1971 war, Admiral Ramdas played a crucial role being the commander of INS Beas, a modern gunnery ship at the time, The Indian Express reported.
When the war broke out on December 3 and on December 4, Captain Ramdas ordered the ship, which was at the Andamans, to go to ‘Action Stations’.
‘Some of the highlights of our action were bombardment and amphibious landings at Cox’s Bazar, interception of gun boats, encounter and boarding of Pakistani vessels masquerading as foreign merchant vessels, and anti-submarine operations,’ Ramdas told The Indian Express in a 2021 interview.
In recognition of his courage and determination in the war he was awarded the Vir Chakra.
Fifty years later, Admiral Ramdas said ‘Wars don’t solve anything. We should do a better job of neighbourhood management.’
Admiral Ramdas joined the Navy in 1949 as a teenager and rose to become the Indian Navy chief November 30, 1990. He retired in 1993.
Admiral Ramdas had claimed he had done ‘active work in building people to people dialogues between India and Pakistan’.
Ploughshares Fund, a body focused on reducing global nuclear threat, said in their profile on him that Admiral Ramadas ‘turned his energies to the cause of nuclear disarmament’.
The human rights body said that Admiral Ramdas’ 'voice stood out louder and greater than others from the nation', according to the report.
