Drama 🎠on the High Seas🌊- 30 years ago
‘Operation Cactus’, India’s swift intervention in the Maldives, was riveting till the end ‘Operation Cactus’, the code name for India’s military intervention in the Maldives in 1988, following an attempted coup d’état against the government of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and his request for help, was spontaneous and swift. But its finale, in mid-ocean, was a rescue operation that had a thorny side to it. On learning about the swift landing of an Indian Army parachute brigade at Hulule airport adjacent to the island capital of Male, the mercenaries of the Sri Lankan rebel group, the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), ran for cover after randomly grabbing people from the mainland and holding them hostage on board a hijacked merchant vessel, MV Progress Light, that had been anchored in Male harbour. Among this motley group of seven hostages was a Maldivian cabinet minister and his mother-in-law. As the hijacked ship moved out of Male harbour, the Indian rescue p