Captain Gurbachan Singh Salaria, PVC (29 November 1935 – 5 December 1961) was an Indian military officer and member of a United Nations peacekeeping force.

Salaria was an alumnus of King George's Royal Indian Military College and the National Defence Academy (NDA).

He was the first NDA alumnus and is the only UN Peacekeeper to be awarded a Param Vir Chakra (PVC), India's highest wartime military decoration.

On 5 December, as part of Operation Unokat, Salaria's battalion was tasked to clear a roadblock of two armoured cars manned by 150 gendarmes of the secessionist State of Katanga on the way to the Elizabethville Airport.

Gurbachan Singh Salaria was born on 29 November 1935, in Jamwal, a village near Shakargarh, Punjab, British India (now in Pakistan).

[3] As a result of the partition of India, Salaria's family moved to the Indian part of Punjab and settled in Jangal village in Gurdaspur district.

Belgium sent troops to protect fleeing whites and two areas of the country, Katanga and South Kasai, subsequently seceded with Belgian support.

[a] The resolution condemned Katanga's secession and authorised the use of force to immediately resolve the conflict and establish peace in the region.

Captain Salaria, with a platoon from Alpha Company close to the airport road,[c] was to block the gendarmes' retreat, and to attack them if required.

[15] The close engagement with the Indian troops resulted in the gendarmerie losing about half their men; they fled in confusion, leaving their dead and the injured behind.

This enabled the main battalion to easily overrun the Katangese force, clear the roadblock, and prevent the gendarmes from encircling the UN Headquarters in Élisabethville.

The citation read: On 5 December 1961, 3/1 Gorkha Rifles was ordered to clear a roadblock established by the gendarmerie at a strategic roundabout at Elizabethville, Katanga.

Captain Salaria with his small force arrived at a distance of 1500 yards from the roadblock at approximately 1312 hours on 5 December 1961 and came under heavy automatic and small-arms fire from an undetected enemy position dug in on his right flank.

Captain Salaria appreciating that he had run into a subsidiary roadblock and ambush and that this enemy force might reinforce the strategic roundabout and thus jeopardise the main operation, decided to remove this opposition.

Captain Salaria was wounded in his neck by a burst of automatic fire but continued to fight till he collapsed due to profuse bleeding.

[20] During an October 2017 episode of the radio programme Mann Ki Baat about Indian contribution to international peacekeeping, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi said, Who can forget the sacrifice of Captain Gurbachan Singh Salaria who laid down his life while fighting in Congo in Africa?