5th Gorkha Rifles (Frontier Force)
infantry regiment of the Indian Army comprising Gurkha soldiers of Indian and Nepalese origin
5th Gorkha Rifles (Frontier Force), also abbreviated as 5 GR(FF) and previously 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles (Frontier Force) is an infantry regiment of the Indian Army comprising Gurkha soldiers of Nepalese origin. It was formed in 1858 as part of the British Indian Army.
The regiment's battalions served in the First World War and Second World War (Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, Mediterranean, Italian campaign, and in Burma).
The regiment was known as the 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles (Frontier Force) when it was one of the Gurkha regiments that was transferred to the Indian Army following the independence of Indian and Pakistan in 1947 and given its current name in 1950.
Since 1947, the regiment has served in a number of conflicts, including the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. It has also participated in peacekeeping operations in Sri Lanka.
History
19th century
The regiment was raised by Major HFM Boisragon in 1858 as the 25th Native Punjab Infantry, also known as the "Hazara Goorkha Battalion".
The soldiers of the regiment originated from the Kingdom of Nepal and in 1861 it was renamed the 5th Gurkha Regiment. The regiment's first major action was during the Second Afghan War, where they were awarded their first battle honour at Peiwar Kotal and Captain John Cook was awarded the Victoria Cross. In this conflict, soldier Kishanbir Nagarkoti won the Indian Order of Merit thrice, and a fourth time in the Hazara conflict of 1888.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “5th Gorkha Rifles (Frontier Force)” is infantry regiment of the Indian Army comprising Gurkha soldiers of Indian and Nepalese origin. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Gorkha, Rifles and Frontier, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3630803. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1858, 1947, 1950 and 1965.
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This entry incorporates text from “5th Gorkha Rifles (Frontier Force)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.