Onir Sen’s period war drama Operation Safed Sagar has been trending on the #1 spot on Netflix India’s Top 10 after getting rave reviews upon its release this past Friday on August 7. Made in close collaboration with the Indian Air Force, the six-episode series documents the events of the 1999 Kargil War between India and Pakistan, in which the former emerged victorious. There are certain rather dramatic moments in the narrative that have left the audience wondering whether that’s exactly what transpired in real life. SCREEN digs up news archives to verify five such key moments from the show.Operation Safed Sagar shows how Pakistan’s then-Joint Chief of Staffs Musharraf, Pervez Musharraf (Manu Rishi Chaddha), was forced by then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (Vinay Pathak) to salute then-India Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (Anjjan Srivastav) upon his historic visit to Lahore in February 1999. However, Musharraf took his sweet time, and instead of saluting the Indian leader, offered a handshake instead, much to his dismay.Historic records show that the moment indeed happened. Firstly, Pakistan’s military service chiefs chose to boycott the welcome reception held for Vajpayee at the Attari-Wagah border. The reason is said to be the fact that they had already initiated military action in India’s side of Kashmir, though they officially maintained that the men, dressed in civilian attire, were part of the separatist group, the Indian Mujahideen.However, when Sharif forced Musharraf to attend a ceremonial event and salute the Indian leader, Musharraf did so reluctantly. He infamously shook hands with Vajpayee, instead of deliberately not giving him a formal military salute, thus breaching the military and diplomatic protocol. This was just a precursor to the major breach he’d go on to execute, by ordering the Pakistani Army to cross the Line of Control, thus kicking off the Kargil War.Little did he know that Musharraf would get a taste of his own medicine just a couple of years later. After India won the Kargil War and Musharraf overthrew the Nawaz Sharif government after imposing Martial Law, and taking over as Pakistan President, he was invited by Vajpayee to India for the Agra summit in 2001.At the ceremonial reception at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi, Air Chief Marshal AY Tipnis was present on behalf of India’s defence forces. However, he returned Musharraf’s favour by not saluting him, only offering a handshake instead. “Musharraf has lied, I think not only to India, he has lied to his own government, lied to his own army, he has lied to his people,” Tipnis told The America Times in 2013.“Just a few years ago when the Kargil incursion took place, they denied in totality, going so far as not to even claim the dead bodies of their soldiers killed in action. This is the worst thing that any soldier can do and this is what the army chief did to his soldier. I believe that he can tell any lie,” he added.Story continues below this adDid Musharraf actually fool Sharif?Operation Safed Sagar also shows that Musharraf misled Sharif into believing the scope of the Kargil War. He fed into the Pakistan PM’s political ambition and made him approve the go-ahead on Pakistani soldiers’ incursions into India. It’s only much later when Sharif learned Musharraf’s true actions and intentions that he began to work towards a ceasefire with the intervention of the US.Nasim Zehra’s 2018 book From Kargil to the Coup: Events that Shook Pakistan confirms that Mushrraf indeed kept Sharif in the dark during the excessive Kargil War operations, painting it as an upgrade on the Indian Mujahideen action instead of admitting to a direct military incursion. By the time Sharif realized the same, it was too late as India refused to believe the narrative set by Pakistan.However, a 2021 article by The Indian Express offers another perspective. “Sharif has always claimed that he was utterly uninformed of Musharraf’s intentions and his Kargil plans. However, it seems he was aware of the plans though he did not anticipate the bitter consequences. So, the more relevant question is why did he approve of the plan? It seems that the then Pakistani PM was ill-informed about the relative strengths of the two armies on LOC. Sharif was confident that his men would get Kargil and later Siachen. The Kargil operation proved to be Pakistan’s biggest blunder after the 1971 war,” wrote Azad Singh Rathore, author of 2016 book Kargil: The Heights of Bravery.Did Pakistan not claim bodies of its soldiers?Operation Safed Sagar also shows the Indian Army chief (Barun Sobti) saying that Pakistan refused to take back the dead bodies of its army men. The idea behind that decision was mostly to stick to its official narrative that it never approved the Pakistan Army to infiltrate the LoC. However, a confession by a captured Pakistan soldier, along with the furnishing of Pakistan Army ID cards of other intruders as evidence, proved otherwise.Story continues below this ad“The Pakistan Army never accepted the dead bodies of many of its soldiers. Later in his book, Musharraf admitted that around 350 soldiers died. Nawaz Sharif also admitted to deaths,” wrote Rathore in the 2021 Indian Express article. Sticking to military protocol, the Indian Army buried the slain Pakistan Army men with Islamic rituals.Also Read: Who is BS Dhanoa? The real-life IAF officer played by Jimmy Shergill in Operation Safed SagarMuch later, Pakistan officially acknowledged that 453 of its soldiers died during the Kargil War. However, several Indian publications, including a 2010 article by The Hindu, claim that more than 4000 Pakistani soldiers died during the war, but Pakistan would refuse to acknowledge that number, still sticking to its narrative that it never officially gave the intrusion a go-ahead.