Colonel Laphir played a major role in the formation and development of the Special Forces Regiment from the original Combat Tracker Team.

Having passed his advanced level examination in the math stream, the family wanted to send him to Libya to study engineering.

Graduating from the Sri Lanka Military Academy second in order of merit in his batch, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on 27 February 1982 into the 1st Rajarata Rifles.

With the Gajaba Regiment, Lieutenant Laphir served in the North and Eastern provinces as the Sri Lankan Civil War escalated.

During this time, he was attached to the military intelligence unit functioning under the Security Forces Headquarters – Jaffna due to his proficiency in the Tamil language.

His men recovered his body and transported it back in a SLAF helicopter that had landed the second batch of commandos.