The India-Pakistan War of 1965 had erupted over Kashmir, with armies and air forces locked in fierce combat across Punjab and the northern frontiers. Pakistan's naval commanders saw an opportunity to relieve pressure on their southern flank by striking the Indian coast. Their intelligence suggested Dwarka housed a Huff-Duff beacon -- a high-frequency direction-finding station they believed was guiding Indian bombers to Pakistani targets. The objectives were ambitious: destroy the radar installation, draw Indian warships out of Mumbai where the submarine PNS Ghazi could ambush them, demoralize the Indian public, and divert the Indian Air Force from its northern operations. Whether the mission achieved any of these goals remains, decades later, a matter of sharp disagreement between Indian and Pakistani accounts.

Pakistani warships bombarded the Dwarka radar station on September 7 and 8. According to Indian sources, the shelling damaged neither the radar equipment nor caused any casualties -- a claim that contrasts sharply with Pakistani accounts asserting meaningful damage to the installation. The frigate INS Talwar lay in nearby Okha Port, but she was undergoing repairs to her condensers and did not intervene. More significantly, the Indian Ministry of Defence had issued explicit written orders restricting the Indian Navy from operating more than 200 miles beyond Mumbai or north of the latitude of Porbandar. The coastal town of Dwarka fell squarely within this restricted zone, but the navy had been told to stand down. The restriction reflected a deliberate Indian strategy to confine the conflict to land, avoiding a naval escalation that could widen the war.

The lack of Indian naval response provoked a political storm. Questions were raised in Parliament about why the navy had not defended its own coastline. Vice Admiral B.S. Soman, the Chief of Naval Staff, had wanted to retaliate but was restrained by the Defence Minister. Vice Admiral N. Krishnan later lamented the failure of INS Talwar to engage, arguing that no government would blame a warship for going into action when attacked. The humiliation cut deep. Indian commentators viewed the raid as either a nuisance operation of no strategic value or a painful exposure of the navy's impotence. Pakistani sources described it as at least a partial success, noting that air raids on Karachi ceased after the bombardment -- though whether this was due to the Dwarka raid or other operational factors remains disputed.

Pakistani historians credit the Dwarka raid as a prime catalyst for the Indian Navy's subsequent modernization and expansion, pointing to dramatically increased naval budgets in the years that followed. Indian analysts offer a more nuanced picture: the post-1965 naval buildup, they argue, was part of a planned expansion already underway since the 1962 Sino-Indian war, with ships negotiated and purchased from the Soviet Union before the Dwarka raid ever occurred. Whatever the cause, the transformation was real. By 1971, when the next India-Pakistan war erupted, the Indian Navy launched a devastating strike on Karachi harbor -- an operation that many saw as the definitive answer to the unanswered raid on Dwarka six years earlier. The 1998 Pakistani dramatization film about the operation, produced by Inter Services Public Relations, suggests how deeply the raid embedded itself in Pakistani military identity.