The assault
The final assault came on the night of 12 June 1999, when Major Vivek Gupta led Charlie Company of 2 Rajputana Rifles up the exposed, near-vertical slopes toward Tololing Top, with no cover for most of the climb. Under sustained artillery and small-arms fire, Gupta pushed the assault into close-quarters combat against the first line of bunkers before sustaining fatal wounds. Naik Digendra Kumar, hit in the arm during the advance, kept firing his light machine gun to cover the rest of the company's approach. Four other soldiers were killed in the assault — Subedar Bhanwar Lal Bhakar, Naik Surendra, Naik Chaman Singh, and Lance Naik Jasvir Singh — before the peak was cleared by the morning of 13 June.
Why it mattered
Tololing wasn't just one hilltop among many — it directly overlooked the highway India needed to move troops, artillery, and supplies into the rest of the Kargil sector. Its recapture was the first sign, for a country watching a war unfold on live television for the first time, that the intrusion could be reversed. It reset the momentum of the entire campaign.