NEW DELHI—On the occasion of its 72nd Republic Day on Jan. 26 India honored its soldiers martyred in a bloody conflict with the People’s Liberation Army in Galwan valley on June 15 last year and for the first time ever gave a detailed description of what transpired between the two armies in the trans-Himalayan heights of Ladakh. In the clash at Galwan that India calls Operation Snow Leopard, which happened because of a bridge India was building on the Galwan River, twenty Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers lost their lives. The commanding officer of the 16 Bihar Infantry Battalion, Colonel Santosh Babu, who was stationed along with his soldiers in Galwan, was posthumously awarded India’s second-highest gallantry award, the Mahavir Chakra, by President Ram Nath Kovind during the Republic Day celebrations on Tuesday. “Col Santosh Babu was deployed in Galwan Valley (eastern Ladakh) during Operation SNOW LEOPARD, and was …