AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 7 – Panorama CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 219 of 332 2 Pakistan POW Camp in Gwalior Brig Ravi Palsokar Genre: POW Camp Administration his 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 the 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 Shimla 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 POWwas given to Headquarters Central Command which established the required numbers of camps in the various stations under their Command. The POWwere 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 PS 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 T