AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 7 – Panorama CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 230 of 332 Lt Gen Niazi was still hoping to negotiate a ceasefire and not surrender. There are multiple versions of how the discussions between Jacob and Niazi played out, from several Pakistanis and from Jacob’s own book. They identify sometimes different turning-points in the discussion, but all of them make it clear that Niazi was by this time mentally a completely defeated and traumatised man. Later, Lt Gen Niazi complained that Jacob blackmailed him into surrender by threatening to turn the Mukti Bahini loose on Pakistanis in Dacca. Jacob always denied having made any such threat. But whether by threats, by persuasion, or by the sheer power of Maj Gen Jacob’s personality, after three hours of intense negotiation, Lt Gen Niazi eventually agreed to sign the Instrument of Surrender, to do so in public (he tried to negotiate for a signature in his office), and to provide a Pakistan Army guard of honour for the Indian contingent at the surrender ceremony. At around 3 pm, Lt Gen Niazi and Maj Gen Jacob drove to the airport, in Gen Niazi’s staff car. Mukti Bahini fighters, who were about in far greater numbers than Indian troops at the time, swarmed the car, and again it took all the force of Jacob’s personality as well as that of his staff officer, a powerfully-built and Stentorian-voiced Sikh, to reach the airport safely. They picked up an escort along the way, of a jeep with all of two Indian paratroopers. The two paratroopers had come into Dacca on a preliminary scouting drive, when they and their jeep were commandeered by Gen Jacob. They stuck by his side for the rest of the day, probably nonplussed at their sudden responsibility, but in the manner of most paratroopers, admirably game for the unexpected. At the airport, a Mukti Bahini commander, a former Pakistani Army officer of Bengali origin, appeared with a truckload of fighters, threatening Niazi. Jacob stared him down, with the judicious back-up of the two paratroopers, and ordered him off the airfield. Around 4:30 pm, Maj Gen Jacob’s direct superior and Niazi’s Indian counterpart, Lt Gen JS Aurora, Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army’s Eastern Command, arrived with a fleet of nine IAF helicopters. He was accompanied by Eastern theatre Commanders-in- Chief of the Indian Navy and Air Force, Vice Admiral N Krishnan and Air Marshal HC Dewan. Also included in the entourage was Lt Gen Sagat Singh, whomore than any other commander had effected successes on the ground, and some of his division commanders, as well as some senior officers of the Bangladeshi government in exile in Calcutta. Lt Gen AAK Niazi