When the colonel's body was brought to Bangalore, there were heart-rending scenes at his Lower Palace Orchards home. As his wife Subhashini and daughters Rukmini, 10, and Yeshodha, 7, watched in grief, the nation saluted the hero.
A month before his death, the family had spent a holiday in Kashmir. Little did they realise that it would be their last holiday together.
His friends in the army say the colonel was a rare officer for whom the country came before anything else. For him, his jawans meant the world and he would go to any extent to protect them just the way he did the night he died.
Like a true leader, he led from the front to ensure that his men were safe, a friend from the army said.
The son of a Life Insurance Corporation of India employee, Vasanth's love for the army blossomed at the age of three when he first heard about the Indian Army. From that day onwards, he always wanted to join the army. His mother Prafulla Venugopal explains that his ambition was to become a soldier and fight for his country.
Before he joined the army, he had to deal with a defect in his nose, which stood in the way of his dream. He underwent surgery, following which he joined the Indian Military Academy in Dehradun and was commissioned as an officer in 1989.
Image: November 9, a policeman takes position as soldiers storm a terrorist hideout in Sopore, some 55 km north of Srinagar. Four soldiers and five terrorists were killed in the operation. Photograph: Rouf Bhat/AFP/Getty Images
Also read: Kargil's first hero
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