Francis Dias
Indian Army General
Lieutenant-General Francis Tiburtius Dias, PVSM, AVSM, VrC (14 October 1934 – 16 January 2019) was an Indian Army officer, who was involved in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971.
Early days
Dias was born in 1934 into a Goan family having Portuguese ancestry. He is the elder brother of Cardinal Ivan Dias.
Military career
Francis T. Dias joined the Gorkha Regiment in 1954 as a second lieutenant.
Vir Chakra
The citation for the Vir Chakra awarded to him reads:
Lieutenant Colonel Francis Tiburtius Dias was commanding a battalion of 11th Gorkha Rifles during the operations against Pakistan in the Eastern Sector. On 12 December 1971, he was ordered to capture a well prepared position held by an enemy infantry battalion. Again, on 13 December, the battalion was assigned the task of capturing two bridges held by the enemy in strength. And finally on 14 December 1971 the battalion was assigned the task of capturing a portion of Bogra Town. Under his leadership, the battalion carried out all the tasks successfully, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy. After contacting the enemy defences at Mahasthana, he infiltrated between the enemy's forward defended localities, raided the enemy battalion headquarters, and captured the officer commanding along with other officers.
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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 Apr 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5480730. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1934, 2019, 1971 and 1954.
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This entry incorporates text from “Francis Dias” 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.