Chennai’s Velachery–Tambaram High Road is set to be renamed after Major Mukund Varadarajan, the Ashok Chakra awardee whose story reached a national audience through the film Amaran. The Tambaram City Municipal Corporation cleared the resolution to rename the 16-kilometre stretch on June 11, 2026, after the necessary approvals from the state’s Municipal Administration and Water Supply Department. Officials said the new signage and formal changes would be put in place over the coming weeks.
The road was chosen for a reason. Varadarajan grew up in this part of suburban Chennai and did his early schooling there, and the corporation wanted a lasting marker in his hometown that younger residents would pass every day. The decision also comes amid renewed public interest in his life following director Rajkumar Periasamy’s biographical drama Amaran, which featured Sivakarthikeyan and Sai Pallavi and was produced under Kamal Haasan’s Raaj Kamal Films International.
An officer of the Rajput Regiment
Varadarajan, an officer from the Rajput Regiment, was on deputation with the 44th Battalion of the Rashtriya Rifles in South Kashmir. He had already built a reputation in counter-insurgency work, having tracked down and killed Altaf Baba, the Jaish-e-Mohammed commander for southern Kashmir, in an earlier operation.
His final operation took place on April 25, 2014, in Qazipathri village in the Shopian district. Acting on time-sensitive intelligence about a group of armed militants — among them Altaf Baba’s successor, Altaf Wani — he took field command of an assault team and reached the cordoned area within about half an hour. The same cell had killed Election Commission officials overseeing Lok Sabha polling in the area just a day earlier.
The operation at Qazipathri
The encounter turned into a close-quarters firefight as the militants opened up with automatic weapons and grenades from inside a fortified house. When one of his soldiers was fatally hit, Varadarajan moved into the line of fire to draw attention away from the rest of his team and killed Altaf Wani.
He was struck by three bullets to the torso during the exchange. Despite his injuries, he continued to direct his men until the compound was cleared and the area secured. He was then evacuated towards the Army’s 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar but died on the way. In August 2014, the Government of India posthumously awarded him the Ashok Chakra, the country’s highest peacetime gallantry decoration — the recognition that the renamed road now carries into his hometown.
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