Can we get back our soldiers, please? Who is more important – Dawood Ibrahim or our soldiers? Should we be worrying about trade links with neighbouring countries rather than a moral issue? While our leaders at the SAARC Summit will be playing their little games, will they even pause to think that some of our soldiers may be lying in the prison cells of an alien country for almost three decades?
Isn’t it strange that while the minorities are escaping from Bangladesh, our jawans who fought for the independence of that country are still in some Pakistani prison? In 1971 we were too elated as cries of “Jai Bangla” rent the air. In that charged atmosphere 93,000 Pakistani prisoners were handed over, but we ‘forgot’ to ask for our men to be returned. Yes, forgot!
Thirty years. It is a long time. So, who remembers? In a 13-day war if 54 of our men in uniform went missing, would it be reason enough to weep? Their families cry, and I have seen some of their tears. This is one case I have been pursuing for almost ten years, and during the Agra Summit the subject about the return of our prisoners of war was raised. But it seems it is one more carrot-and-stick game between the two countries. The people who I had seen waiting for their families ten years ago are now older, others must be dead. As I watched them on television as a backdrop to the token talks, I felt even more helpless as I recalled the wrinkled face of Dr. R. S. Suri.
Flashback to 1992. It was a cold afternoon in Faridabad. We were sunning ourselves in the small patch of green in the Suri house. Lorries honked their way through the street, birds chirped on the trees, flies hovered over the coffee mug. It was an ordinary household. Except that this one was waiting. For Ashok who, at 25, was the youngest Major in the army.
He hasn’t returned since the 1971 war. A follow-up seems a redundancy. It is status quo ante. Among bitterness and faith I try to map lives that have been kept alive only on hope. And evidence: That the proud sons of this land are not all dead. The Pakistani government insists it does not have any Indian defence personnel in its custody; this has been its stand all along, and India has not pursued to contradict it. It has been the brave families that are fighting.
Imagine you were the father and someone knocked on your door and told you that your son was dead, they had attended his cremation and condolence meeting. What would you do? Dr.R.S. Suri winced, but for a moment. Then he asked for proof. “Sir,” he questioned the officer, “If my son died in action I want to see his army belt, his uniform and identification disc.” None was available. A junior then told him that his son was probably in Udhampur hospital. He went there, only to find another Major A. K. Suri from the 9 Jat regiment, while his son, Ashok, belonged to the 5 Assam Regiment.
Upon returning to the city, he contacted the headquarters where he was informed that his son was all right, it was the other Suri who was dead. “I was shocked. Here I had just come back after seeing this other Suri alive and they thought by misleading me they could make me happy. I was convinced that these people did not know anything. If the sun is rising and someone tells me it is night, how am I to believe it? The truth is on my side.”
The truth is hard facts. In 1973, the International Red Cross confirmed that Major Suri was missing, but the Pakistani authorities wouldn’t allow its representatives to visit the jails. Dr. Suri’s lonely journey was yet to begin when the postman knocked. The handwriting on the envelope was childish. He tore it open to find a slip in which his son had written that he was in Pakistan. The covering note read, “Sahib, valaikumsalam, I cannot meet you in person. Your son is alive and he is in Pakistan. I could only bring his slip, which I am sending you. Now going back to Pak.” Signed M. Abdul Hamid. The postmark was New Delhi, December 31, 1974.
Six months later there was another letter. “Dear Daddy,” it said, “Ashok touches thy feet to get your benediction. I am quite ok here. Please try to contact the Indian Army or Government of India about us. We are 20 officers here. Don’t worry about me. Pay my regards to everybody at home, specially to mummy, grandfather – Indian government can contact Pakistan government for our freedom.” The then defence secretary confirmed the handwriting as Ashok’s and changed the official statement from “killed in action” to “missing in action”.
Major A.K. Ghosh’s story is more or less similar. At the end of the war the family was informed that he be presumed dead. Sometime later his wife wrote to the commanding officer saying that if her husband was cremated with full military honours his ashes should be sent to her. Amazingly, she got the urn only one year after the request. No one believed it. Tangible proof was missing. Major Ghosh’s brother, A.Ghosh, an ex-warrant officer, was incredulous at the blatant absence of credibility. “After an officer dies there are any number of his men who are prepared to accompany his cortege to his home, and the government does not incur any extra expenditure. Later, however, we were told about his whereabouts. Obviously someone was trying to save his skin.”
When Damayanti Tambay, wife of Ft. Lt. B.V. Tambay, read in the ‘Sunday Pakistan Observer’ published from Dhaka the news item that five pilots were captured alive and the list included the name of her husband, was she foolish to believe that he was alive? And when a Bangladeshi naval officer confirmed having met him, what was she supposed to do – presume, like HQ did, that he was dead?
When M.L. Bhaskar in his book, ‘I Spied For India’, mentioned the names of some of our defence officers who were in jail from the information he had got from a Pakistani official when he himself was in prison, was he lying?
These cases are bizarre not as much for what has happened as for why they did. The Indian government is quite certain that our army personnel are still in Pakistani prisons for these 30 years. A wonderful opportunity presented itself during the Janata regime under Morarji Desai. But the then external affairs minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, got into technicalities. When President Zia-ul Haq, realising that he was in a position to demand, insisted that for every five Pakistani soldiers one Indian would be returned, Vajpayee shot back that the international ratio was 1:1.
As Indira Gandhi’s home minister, Narasimha Rao had asked families of the missing personnel to visit Pakistan. In 1983 a delegation was taken to a civilian jail in Multan. None of the prisoners recognised them. As Suri was to recount later, “We were promised we would be shown our relatives. We had not travelled all the way to meet petty smugglers, trespassers and illegal entrants.”
Among these, A.Ghosh did spot a man who resembled his brother. “I was scrutinizing him when he whispered, ‘Those who you are looking for are not here’. Many of them were heartbroken, lying on the ground, unable to walk or talk. But this visit was a complete eyewash.”
Can the Indian government be prosecuted? And be later pursued in a court of law? A human rights activist lawyer had told me that a prima facie case could be set out if the courts feel the government has not been sincere. The case only gets strengthened if there is evidence to back it. Besides the ones mentioned, there is another crucial one.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto could not sleep. Every night he heard demented cries wafting towards his cell from the other side of the barracks. Where did those loud sobs emanate from? Who was being tortured? In prisons no one asked why. One of his lawyers made enquiries and was told by the jail authorities that they were Indian prisoners held after the 1971 war.
This bit of information comes from BBC correspondent Victoria Scholfied’s book ‘The Bhutto Trial and Execution’. Since it was published years after the war, we must ask why the Indian POWs were still behind bars. Why were they still being tortured? And if, as Scholfied writes, “When the time came to exchange POWs, the Indian government did not accept these lunatics as they could not recount their place of origin. And thus, they were retained at Kot Lakhpat,” then we must know the answers to many more whys.
As late as 1988 reports were trickling in regarding the movement of our defence personnel into military establishments in the North West Frontier Province.
Yet no search has been undertaken. The Indian government would have to look at all possibilities. While the popular theory is that it is merely a political issue, other reasons can also be attributed regarding the missing people. They could be under assumed names, or could have been mistakenly kept back as deranged, or, as is suspected in Major Suri’s case, could have been captured a little before the actual outbreak of war, in which case they do not qualify as POWs but as security prisoners or spies. Which means that all these categories must be checked.
Ghosh confesses to a certain cynicism. “They have done so much for the nation. They are taught that if the country is devastated it is as though your mother is being raped. So they go happily with a gun on their shoulder unafraid of dying.”
But even dead men must be accounted for. And dead men don’t send letters. For how long can the families depend on a wayward hope? Many parents have died in these years and many more will. How long can people live waiting for another to come and prove that he is alive? No one is weeping over all the lost years anymore; they want to seize the days that are left. Ashok Suri, in an alien prison cell, must be 55 years old now. It is still not too late. But as his father said, “Living nations must have hot blood. During the Arab-Israeli conflict 4000 Palestinians were exchanged for just four Israelis. They value their men so much. Here, unfortunately, talks go on. Diplomatic and political solutions have failed. We are beyond crying and wailing now.”
And to think that when the son returns he will not be a war hero anymore, but a broken man whose life was lived on the edge, his best years given to soothing his own bruises. When he comes back, will the youngsters recognise him? Nephews and nieces were born in their family. The missing relative has been introduced to them as a photograph of a man whose smile reached his eyes. They have not seen him.
Can he become a role model to them? For the older armymen, will being pushed into retirement not break them? Accustomed to sounds of barked orders and spiked boots, how will they respond to the concern of their families, who probably encouraged them to join the army? And what will the army do – do they honour men who were not there at the right time? There are no answers. No one expects the gates to open suddenly and a smart salute to greet them. The return of the prodigal is a dream they have stopped seeing. The father’s cataract may take some time adjusting to a sallow face, greying hair and a smile that does not do justice even to the mouth. All Dr. Suri could lament about is, “We did not send our children on a picnic. They fought for the country.”
The country stands silent. Not one political party has included the return of our POWs in its manifesto. Why? Have our defence personnel become pawns? Why hasn’t a single government delegation gone to Pakistan? What have our various ambassadors done?
What about public opinion? Do we care? Are defence scams all that the Armed Forces are about? And are we more interested in scoring points over our neighbour rather than trying to get back what is ours – the war hero? Does not the irony of this phrase hit us in the face anymore?
Does not the appeal, “Join the army” sound like a slap to the parents, since they have been told he is not in the records?
Did he exist?
