An Encounter Like No Other

Ravi Palsokar

This year India is celebrating the Golden Jubilee of her victory over Pakistan in December 1971. The war ended with the creation of Bangladesh and one of its after-effects was that the entire Pakistan Army in the east had surrendered. India then had to house, feed and generally administer some 93,000 prisoners of war (PoW) among whom were a few families of officers and soldiers. These PoW were repatriated after the Simla Agreement between India and Pakistan. However, this took time and the PoW were handed back in late 1973 and early 1974. Till then it was our task to look after them according to the Geneva Conventions. Right from the beginning, the country’s leadership had decided that the PoW would be treated humanely and this was followed in letter and spirit.

The task of lodging and administering the PoW was given to Headquarters Central Command which established the required numbers of camps in the various stations under their Command. The PoW were housed in barracks vacated by our troops, who in 1972 were still deployed at the border. It was fortuitous that the C-in-C of Central Command was Lt. Gen. P.S. Bhagat, VC, who it was soon proved was the ideal man for the task. He laid down very strict rules and procedures to ensure that the PoW were treated with empathy and due firmness without compromising security. The efficacy of this policy soon became apparent when Pakistan started worrying about India’s influence on their soldiers.

As can well be imagined, the actual work of managing and administering the PoW camps fell to junior officers under the watchful gaze of our superior headquarters right up to Command HQ. Personally, I was between postings when the war ended and was shifted to command one such camp in Gwalior. I had not completed 10 years of service and the three officers under me had even less. We were young and ignorant and started our work using first principles of administration of soldiers. This was as good a method as any and we were able to rise to the expectations of our wise Army Commander.

This is the story of that period when I was a PoW Camp Commandant for a period of little over one year. In this set-up we began work and initially there were many glitches. One example was the preparation of a muster roll of PoW showing who exactly was in the Camp. Army number, rank, regiment, age, was easy. The problem was that every other Pakistani soldier had `Mohammed’ in his name and they all spelled it differently. As we were being defeated by this seemingly innocuous difficulty, we agreed that forget the full form, the name would always be abbreviated as Mohd. This simplified the process and we improvised like this all the time.

Routine and Activities

The routine was the same as what we followed in our army. Fortunately, as the Pakistan Army had similar procedures, it was easy to get the PoW to conform and they too recognised what they had to do. There was one major difference in that there was a roll call three times a day, so that any escape could be noticed within the space of few hours. After dinner, the PoW were confined to their barracks except to answer the call of nature and arrangements were made so that these facilities were used only at night. The bathrooms and latrines were in one corner and had waterborne sanitation.

The Camp staff had no responsibility for external security. This was provided by a unit sized force usually of the Territorial Army or the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). They had their own rules and procedures for guard duties, their turnover, administration and everything that a unit does. Every camp had three fences, the first enclosing the barracks, the second a few metres away and an outer perimeter. The space in between could be patrolled by the sentries and outside the outer fence there were watch towers and for the night, flood lights. Additionally, inside the camp nearest the first wire fence, a line was drawn one metre inside, beyond which a PoW could not approach the fence on the pain of being shot at. This was a wise precaution.

How had such detailed instructions been put