General Arunkumar Shridhar Vaidya (27 July 1926 – 10 August 1986) was a General Officer in the Indian Army. He served as the 13th Chief of the Army Staff from 1983 to 1986. Following his retirement, he was assassinated by Harjinder Singh Jinda and Sukhdev Singh Sukha in August 1986. This was done in vengeance of Operation Blue Star. General Arun Vaidya commanded this operation. Family and early life Vaidya was born in Bombay on 27 July 1926 to a Marathi Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu (CKP) family, the son of Shridhar Balkrishna Vaidya CIE, a barrister and sometime district collector of Surat, and his wife Indira. After his early education at Pune, Vaidya studied at Elphinstone High School in Bombay before joining Elphinstone College and later the M. T. B. Arts College at Surat, presumably transferring due to his father's posting there as district collector. At Elphinstone College, Vaidya joined the 1st Bombay Battalion of the University Training Corps (UTC) and was awarded Best Cadet in 1942 before transferring to the MTB College, where he also joined its UTC and attained the rank of Company Quarter-Master Havildar (CQMH). On 30 March 1944, he joined the Officers' Training School at Belgaum as a cadet. He was selected for the Armoured Corps and underwent further training at Ahmednagar, receiving an emergency commission in the Royal Deccan Horse (later the 9th Deccan Horse) of the British Indian Army on 20 January 1945. Vaidya fought in the Burma Campaign with the 14th Army during the final months of the Second World War, including at the battles of Meiktila and Rangoon. His wife's name was Bhanu and they had three daughters. Military career Early army career Vaidya received an emergency commission in the Indian Armoured Corps on 20 October 1945, with the service number IEC-11597, and received a regular army commission as a lieutenant on 7 May 1947 (seniority from 20 April 1947), a few months before India's independence. Post-Independence In September 1948, Vaidya was involved in Operation Polo as a member of the ad hoc armoured force organised from the Armoured Corps Centre and School. The force captured the Daulatabad Fort, the Ellora Caves area and Parbhani. In 1958, he was selected to attend the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, having secured a competitive vacancy. He was subsequently appointed brigade major of the 70 Infantry Brigade. He served in this appointment in Ladakh during the