Indian prisoners of war in Pakistan: Bring back our soldiers

In 2003, I was detailed to attend a course at Lucknow. Called the Medical Officers Junior Command Course, it was a refresher course for doctors of the Armed Forces. I remember, there were a few classes on the geopolitics of the region and, in particular, the unreliable behaviour of our western neighbour. During one of the lectures, the instructor half-jokingly remarked, “Ensure that you never cross the boundary and wander into Pakistan, even by mistake. I know of an officer and his buddy who inadvertently crossed over into Pakistan whilst undertaking an operational reconnaissance at the International Border at Bhuj in Gujarat. They were captured by the Pakistani security forces on April 14, 1997, and to date, no one knows about their whereabouts.”

I had forgotten all about that lecture, until I happened to read a small column in the newspaper recently that mentioned that a certain Kamla Bhattacharjee, mother of Captain Sanjit Bhattacharjee, was appealing to the government to get her son back.

The news story also mentioned that the Indian Army had investigated the case and found that Capt Bhattacharjee was handed over by Pakistani fishermen to one Major Khiyani of the Pakistan Army between border posts (BP) 1162 and 1165. Captain Umar of Umarkot post joined him on April 28 as “two missing persons of Indian Army were taken to the interrogation centre on the outskirts of Hyderabad (in Sindh, Pakistan).”

Strangely, in February 2005, Capt Bhattacharjee’s father had received a letter from the then defence minister regretting “untimely demise of your son, who was earlier declared missing”.

In May 2010, the President’s Secretariat wrote to Kamla Bhattacharjee to say that her son’s name had been added to an existing missing POWs (prisoners of war) list, known as “Missing 54”, and had been taken it up with Pakistani authorities at the highest level.

The Indian government has been strangely indifferent to its PoWs. After the 1971 war, some 93,000 Pakistani soldiers surrendered to the Indian Armed Forces and were taken as POWs. These 93,000 PoWs were repatriated to Pakistan over a period of time; the last prisoner to be repatriated was the Commander of the Pakistani Forces in East Pakistan, Lt Gen A A K Niazi. It is interesting to note that General Niazi’s alma mater was the Officer Training School in Bengaluru.

The story does not end there. There were several Indian POWs in Pakistan, too; many of them were returned to India, but 54 of them never made that journey back to their country. Several of these missing men were pilots who were captured after their aircraft crashed in Pakistan.

The “Missing 54.” That is what they have been called over the years. There is ample evidence to believe that they survived the war. A photograph of Major A K Ghosh was published in ‘Time’ magazine on December 27, 1971. This was well after the war was over. Ft. Lt. V V Tambay was captured alive on December 5, 1971. This fact was acknowledged in Pakistani newspapers and radio. However, he was not repatriated after the war ended.

Years later in 1989, Ft. Lt. Tambay’s uncle, Jayant Jathar, went to Pakistan and happened to meet Gen. Tikka Khan, the ‘Butcher of East Bengal’. Gen. Khan took Jathar to Faisalabad jail. There, he saw a man dressed in a kurta-pyjama sitting on the floor and reading a newspaper. He instantly recognised his nephew. Unfortunately, he was not allowed to speak to him.

In 1979, the BBC journalist Victoria Schofield brought out a book on the trial and execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. In her book, she says that “Bhutto was subjected to a peculiar kind of harassment, which he thought was especially for his benefit. His cell, separated from a barrack area by a 10-foot-high wall, did not prevent him from hearing horrific shrieks and screams at night from the other side of the wall. One of Mr Bhutto's lawyers made enquiries among the jail staff and ascertained that they were in fact Indian prisoners-of-war who had been rendered delinquent and mental during the course of the 1971 war.” Bhutto complained to the jail authorities and wrote that “Fifty-odd lunatics were lodged in the ward next to mine. Their screams and shrieks in the dead of night are something I will not forget.”

Bhutto’s daughter Benazir was fully aware of the presence of Indian PoW’s being illegally detained in Pakistani jails. She had assured the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi that she would “seriously look into their release.” Three decades have passed, the status quo continues to be maintained.

James Maclaren, a London-based writer, author and commentator, has given a completely unbiased account about the status of the Indian PoWs in Pakistan (The Diplomat, December 14, 2018: The Last Secret of the 1971 India-Pakistan War). He says that “as late as 2003, a Canadian human rights representative visiting Lahore Jail was called out to by prisoners claiming to be held from the 1971 conflict but was denied contact with them by his minders.” He also reports that in 2012, an Indian carpenter called Sukhdev Singh, who was working in Oman, was approached by a fellow Sikh who claimed to be Sepoy Jaspal Singh. Jaspal Singh was in Purana Jail in Masirah, Oman. Jaspal Singh who was about 70 years old described his regiment, his village and his family, all the details which were later confirmed when Sukhdev Singh returned to India. Unfortunately, the government of Oman denied that there were Indian prisoners being held captive in its jails.

It is a pity that successive Indian governments have displayed an entirely lackadaisical attitude when it comes to repatriation of the PoWs. I wonder if a little effort by the current government would secure the release of Capt. Sanjit Bhattacharjee and bring a smile to his octogenarian mother’s face.

(We regret to inform our readers that Dr (Col) Nikhil Moorchung, a regular contributor to Deccan Herald, passed away on May 3, succumbing to Covid-19. The above is the last piece he sent us.)