Flight Lieutenant Gunjan Saxena (retd), is caught in controversy over hindi film based on her life Gunjan Saxena. Gunjan was not the first woman to be posted to the Indian Air Force’s critical Udhampur helicopter base, nor the first woman to fly during the Kargil battle of 1999, according to her coursemate, Flight Lieutenant Sreevidya Rajan.
Speaking to ThePrint, Rajan said she watched the movie Sunday evening and was shocked by the “twisting of facts” by the filmmakers.
“Both of us were posted to Udhampur in 1996 but in the movie, it was shown that she was the only lady pilot posted at the unit. Since the two of us were the first lady pilots to be posted to that helicopter unit, we were sceptical about our acceptance in the male-dominated niche area of flying,” Rajan wrote in her Facebook post.
“However, there were enough officers to support us. We were under strict scrutiny and certain mistakes of ours were met with corrective actions which may have been overlooked had it been done by our male counterparts,” she said.
“We had to work harder than our counterparts to prove ourselves to be at par with them. Some were not happy to share the professional space with us, but the majority accepted and treated us as fellow officers working towards a common goal,” she said.
The retired officer said the woman pilots never faced any shame because of physical strength, as shown in the movie, nor were they humiliated by male officers or ill-treated.
“Our flying began within a few days of our arrival and was never interrupted or cancelled for petty reasons as wrongly portrayed in the movie. The squadron commander was a thorough professional. He was a very strict and tough officer who took us to task whenever there was a mistake from our side… be it male or female,” Rajan said.
Rajan said after initial difficulties, “we shared the limited resources with fellow officers and they always accommodated and helped us whenever it was needed”.
In the movie, Gunjan Saxena was shown as the only woman pilot to fly in Kargil operations, and Rajan called it “factually incorrect”.
Rajan flew missions in the conflict area even before Saxena’s arrival at Srinagar, she said.
“We were posted together to Udhampur and when the Kargil conflict started, I was the first woman pilot to be sent along with the male counterparts in the first detachment of our unit which was deployed at Srinagar,” Rajan said.