Agartala Conspiracy Essay Sample

Agartala Conspiracy Case a instance framed by the Pakistan Government in 1968 during the Ayub government against Awami League head tribal sheik mujibur rahman. some in-service and ex-service ground forces forces and high authorities functionaries. They were accused of engagement in a confederacy to divide the East wing from Pakistan with the aid of the authorities of India. The petitis principii in the request was that the confederacy was concocted between the Indian party and the accused individuals at Agartala metropolis of Tripura in India. The instance was therefore called Agartala Conspiracy Case. However. the Pakistan authorities was compelled to retreat the instance in the face of a mass motion in East Pakistan. Since the origin of Pakistan. the people of East Pakistan were deprived of their legitimate rights in all domains. Consequently. a general bitterness against the Pakistani swayers brewed among the people of East Pakistan.

The demand for liberty as placed through the six-point programme of the Awami League head Sheikh Mujibur Rahman therefore received the self-generated support of the people of East Pakistan.

The acute disparity in the armed forces led some Bangali ground forces officers and soldiers to be united in secret. Knowing full well that the involvement of Bangalis could ne’er be served under the swayers of West Pakistan. they decided to do East Pakistan independent through an armed rebellion. With this terminal in position. they began to call up ground forces forces in secret. The confederacy was. nevertheless. detected by the intelligence section of the authorities. About one thousand five hundred Bangalis throughout Pakistan were arrested by the intelligence force. The Home Department of Pakistan declared through a press-note issued on 6 January 1968 that the authorities had detected in December 1967 a confederacy detrimental to the national involvement of Pakistan. The press-note disclosed the intelligence of the apprehension of 8 individuals including 2 CSP officers and alleged that the individuals seized were involved in trying to divide East Pakistan through armed rebellion. Through a separate declaration issued on 18 January 1968 the Home Department implicated Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in the confederacy. He was so detained in gaol along with many others since 9 May 1966.

They were released. merely to be arrested once more under soldierly jurisprudence ordinances and were taken to Dhaka Cantonment under military detention. Initially the authorities decided to tribunal soldierly the accused. but later in the involvement of the proper retention of the general elections of 1970 the authorities resolved to border charge merely against 35 concerned political personalities and high authorities functionaries under civil jurisprudence. The individuals included in the charge-sheet were Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Commander Moazzem Hossain. Steward Mujibur Rahman. former LS Sultanuddin Ahmad. LSCDI Nur Mohammad. Ahmed Fazlur Rahman CSP. Flight Sergeant Mahfiz Ullah. Corporal Abdus Samad. former Havildar Dalil Uddin. Ruhul Quddus CSP. Flight Sergeant Md. Fazlul Haq. Bibhuti Bhushan Chowdhury alias Manik Chowdhury. Bidhan Krishna Sen. Subedar Abdur Razzaque. former clerk Mujibur Rahman. former Flight Sergeant Md. Abdur Razzaque. Sergeant Zahurul Haq. A. B. Khurshid. Khan Mohammad Shamsur Rahman CSP. AKM Shamsul Haque. Havildar Azizul Haq. Mahfuzul Bari. Sergeant Shamsul Haq. Shamsul Alam. Captain Md. Abdul Motaleb. Captain A. Shawkat Ali Mian. Captain Khondkar Nazmul Huda. Captain M Nuruzzaman. Sergeant Abdul Jalil. Mahbub Uddin Chowdhury. Lt. M Rahman. former Subedar Tajul Islam. Ali Reza. Captain Khurshid Uddin Ahmed. and Lt. Abdur Rauf.

A particular court was formed after an amendment was made in the penal codification to that terminal for the disposal of the instance. The hearing of the instance started on 19 June 1968 under Sections 121-A and 131. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was enrolled as accused No. 1. The instance was entitled ‘State V Sheikh Mujibur Rahman & A ; others’ . The tribunal started proceedings of the instance in a extremely protected chamber inside Dhaka Cantonment. A charge-sheet consisting of 100 paragraphs against the 35 accused was placed before the court. There were 227 informants including 11 approvers. However. 4 approvers were declared hostile by the authorities. Thomas William. a British attorney and a member of the British Parliament. filed a writ request in Dhaka High Court on behalf of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman disputing the legality of the formation of the court. He was Helped in carry oning legal proceedings in the particular tribunal by Abdus Salam Khan. Ataur Rahman Khan. and others. The authorities attorneies taking the instance were the former foreign curate Manzur Quader and Advocate General TH Khan. Justice SA Rahman. the Chairman of the three-member court. was a non-Bangali. The other members MR Khan and Maksumul Hakim were Bangalis. The authorities was bent on placing Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as a seperatist and an Indian agent thereby eliciting public support against him.

But the approvers on the witness-box declared that the authorities had compelled them by menace and persecution to subject false grounds in its favor. Thus the governmental planning against the accused got exposed. By this clip the Sarbadaliya Chhatra Sangram Parishad supported by maulana abdul hamid khan bhasani organised aggregate motion against the confederacy of the authorities and demanded immediate backdown of the instance and release of all captives including Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. At a point when the streets of Dhaka became a hot bed of convulsion. Sergeant Zahurul Haq. 17th accused in the instance. was pitilessly changeable to decease while in parturiency in Dhaka Cantonment.

The intelligence of his decease led a ferocious rabble to put fire to the State Guest House every bit good as other edifices. S. A Rahman. Chairman of the court. and Manzur Quader. main attorney on the authorities side. who were so shacking in the invitee house. evacuated in secret. Some of the files refering the instance were burnt to ashes. In the face of the mass motion. the Ayub authorities was finally compelled to retreat the Agartala Conspiracy Case on 22 February 1969. All the accused. including Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. were released unconditionally. On the undermentioned twenty-four hours ( 23 February ) . a expansive public response was accorded to the accused at Paltan Maidan in Dhaka where Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was vested with the denomination of ‘Bangabandhu’ . [ Shahida Begum ] The Agartala Conspiracy

Altaf Gauhar

( Selected from “Ayub Khan – Pakistan’s First Military Ruler” . published in 1996 by University Press Limited. Dhaka )

Frustration and resentment continued to turn beneath the surface. The people were aggrieved and sullen and the disposal had lost its clasp and assurance. Ayub and his associates appeared and acted as if they were under besieging. The intelligence bureaus were busy observing inchoate confederacies. They eventually hit the jackpot-the Agartala Conspiracy.

Ayub was in East Pakistan in December 1967. He was due to see a paper mill in Chandragona but the visit was called off because of a study that an effort was probably to he made to blow up the President’s plane. The military intelligence claimed that some civil and military functionaries were be aftering to procure the sezession of East Pakistan in coaction with Indian agents. Few senior functionaries around Ayub attached any importance to this claim. They had seen the work of military intelligence bureaus during the war and knew how they would unearth some fanciful enemy secret plan and so. taking the spot between their dentitions. set out to invent ways of thwarting that secret plan. They were basically colonial probe bureaus who specialized in trailing suspects and extorting grounds. entirely unfamiliar with the more modern and sophisticated technique of intelligence.

On 6 January 1968. 28 individuals were arrested on charges of cabaling to convey about the sezession of East Pakistan. Among them were three senior members of the Civil Service. Ruhul Quddus. Fazlur Rahman. and Shamsur Rahman. and a naval officer. Lieutenant Commander Muazzam Hussain. along with a figure of non-commissioned officers. mariners and civilians. The military intelligence claimed that they had conspired with P. N. Ojha. First Secretary of the Indian Deputy High Commission in Dhaka. and had visited Agartala ( capital of the Indian province of Tripura ) to discourse their programs for East Pakistan’s session from the remainder of the state with two Indian officers. Lieutenant-Colonel Misra and Major Menon. None of the civilian bureaus. except the Intelligence Bureau under the Home Ministry. had been taken into assurance. and the whole instance was being handled by GHQ. under the direct control of General Yahya.

On 25 January 1968 the Information Secretary was called to the President’s House and conducted to Ayub’s sleeping room. He knew it was traveling to be one of those relaxed Sessionss when Ayub would reminisce and speak about whatever came to his head. and he would play the function of a quiet speaker and diary keeper. As the Information Secretary was walking towards the sleeping room. Ayub’s personal doctor. Lieutenant-Colonel Mohyuddin. met him and said: `He is much better now. he developed some hurting in the dorsum. ’ Ayub was lying in bed with a few books and newspapers on the side-table. He said that while taking exercising in the forenoon he had sprained a musculus in his dorsum. The Information Secretary told him that the Japanese had completed the field study for spread outing the web of telecasting in West Pakistan and shortly it should be possible to associate up Peshawar with Lahore. Ayub was rather aroused: `1 want the people in West Pakistan to acquire closely knit up. ’ He was highly happy that the Information Ministry had established telecasting in the state in such a short clip: `It is traveling to be a major instrument of national integrating. And you deserve great recognition for that. ’

Ayub talked of his circuit of Sindh from which he had returned a twosome of yearss before. He had made a figure of addresss in support of One Unit. and was really happy that he had non pulled any clouts. He had warned the people of Sindh that he would non let anybody to dismember One Unit. He was confident that the West Pakistanis would draw together but he was profoundly disquieted about dealingss between East and West Pakistan. What disturbed him most was that Bengali Muslims saw small benefit in populating together with West Pakistanis. The Information Secretary suggested that possibly the Bengalis had non had a just trade. to which Ayub reacted rather angrily: `You become quite emotional when it comes to the Bengalis. ’

The Information Secretary was a small taken aback but he did non give up. He argued that the Bengalis might be a extremely emotional people but they had echt grudges. Even what had been promised to them under the Constitution had non been delivered. For case. the Fundamental law required that the federal legislative assembly and its secretariat should be located in Dhaka. which was to function as the 2nd capital of Pakistan. What they had been given was a shade town. All legislative work continued to be done in Islamabad where the assembly staff was for good lodged. Ayub leaned back a small wearily: `Listen. my beloved chap. I gave them the 2nd capital because they are traveling to necessitate it one twenty-four hours. They are non traveling to stay with us. ’

Following forenoon. 26 January 1968. there was the usual Cabinet meeting which was delayed by about 30 proceedingss because the American Ambassador had obtained an pressing interview with Ayub. In the Cabinet meeting. Ayub was remarkably rough with his Bengali curates. He said to Altaf Hussain. Minister for Industries. `you used to talk to the universe and now don’t mutter a word even in your slumber. ’ The prevailing state of affairs in East Pakistan. Ayub said. was the consequence of propaganda which had been traveling on against West Pakistan for the last 20 old ages. Equally far as he could see. the pick before East Pakistan was partnership with West Pakistan or bondage: `These are non popular things to state. but I am non looking for popularity. ’ He did non desire to impeach any peculiar person but the acrimonious truth was that no Bengali politician saw any benefit in staying with Pakistan. The authorities was now confronted with an issue of tremendous gravitation: `I don’t think any one of us here can decide it”

Ayub did non advert it but the Agartala Conspiracy was feeding on his head. His first reaction to the study that an effort might be made on his life was: `What rubbish. as if I care two bloody hoots for a thing like that. ’ But the incident had convinced him that the resistance parties in East Pakistan were engaged in hatching some confederacy to rupture East Pakistan off from West Pakistan. The Information Secretary suggested that it would be helpful if the President undertook an extended circuit of the state and talked to the people straight. He shook his caput and said: `Don’t forget I am non a immature adult male. ’ He asked the Home Minister and the Industries Minister to publish a statement warning the people that the anthem of hatred that was being endlessly chanted in East Pakistan would take to separation if East Pakistani politicians did non do any effort to halt it. It was a long and unpleasant meeting which left Ayub exhausted.

Subsequently that flushing. there was a feast in honor of King Hussein of Jordan. Ayub was standing with King Hussein having the invitees. As he shook custodies with the Information Secretary he asked him whether the statement had been issued and said: `They are believing of sezession over at that place. What bunk. we will intertwine them. ’ All this while he kept keeping the Information Secretary’s manus who could experience that Ayub’s manus was really warm. as if he was running high temperature.

While suggesting the toast Ayub missed out a whole subdivision of the written text. General Rafi confided to the Information Secretary that the President was non experiencing good ; he had gone to the airdrome on a bitterly cold forenoon to have King Hussein. and had caught a iciness. No 1 had any intuition that they were seeing Ayub Khan in full wellness for the last clip. Tall. handsome. elegant and energetic. he had merely turned sixty-one. All his life he had been highly careful about his diet and habitue in his wonts. He played golf and did non let anything to interfere with his shikar agenda. No 1 could hold imagined that his wellness would crumple so all of a sudden and so wholly.

Ayub used to air a address to the people on the first of every month. The text of the address for the month of February had been approved and it merely remained to be recorded for broadcast. The recording was postponed as Ayub was non experiencing excessively good. After that there was non a word about the President’s wellness. All efforts to acquire any information from the President’s personal doctor proved futile. The President’s House. and the country around it. were surrounded by soldiers on 29 January 1968 and cipher was allowed entree even to the members of the President’s secretariat.

The Information Secretary’s function was now limited to having a day-to-day wellness bulletin from the President’s personal doctor. and let go ofing it to the Press. On 6 February the bulletin said that Ayub had developed viral pneumonia in the right lung. following a touch of ‘flu. The following twenty-four hours his temperature was reported to hold subsided and he was experiencing much better. On 8 February. the bulletin said. `The clinical marks of pneumonia in the right lung have improved further and the President is much better. ’ On 10 February. the cough was better and the President was experiencing comfy. Within proceedingss of this bulletin the Information Secretary was called to the President’s House. The President’s boy. Akhtar Ayub. met him in the porch and said: `So. you excessively were locked out.

I am glad to see you back. ’ Apart from Ayub’s married woman. no other member of his household had been allowed to see him. Ayub was lean backing against two big pillows and had a glass of orange juice in his manus. He looked relaxed and agreed to the suggestion that he might run into some of his curates and the governors. A big cardiac proctor was placed near his bed. The room next to his sleeping room looked like a research lab where two ground forces physicians were supervising the electrocardiograph. It was apparent that General Yahya had taken personal control of the state of affairs the minute he learnt that Ayub might yield to what was evidently a serious bosom onslaught. A putsch d’etat had. in fact. taken topographic point. Yahya would subsequently claim that he had acted under Ayub’s instructions.

The following twenty-four hours. 11 February. before any meetings could be arranged. came another message that Ayub had suffered `a little backsliding on the dark between 10 and 1 1 February’ . It was non a little backsliding but a prostration. The bulletin on 15 February conveyed the deep but true message: `Since the issue of the last bulletin on 10 February. the President’s recovery got delayed ; he developed pneumonic intercalation Sunday dark. ’ At last the people of Pakistan came to cognize that Ayub was enduring from pneumonic intercalation and non viral pneumonia. The truth came out because Professor John Forest Goodwin of Hammersmith General Hospital. London. who had been summoned for audience. refused to subscribe a medical bulletin which did non give the true image of his patient’s wellness. The President’s doctor. who had been sophisticating the bulletins. was a small put out but his account was that he had been transporting out his Commander-in-Chief’s instructions.

Ayub made an unexpected but steady recovery after that. He received Governor Musa on 16 February. and the following twenty-four hours. 17 February. Ayub appeared on the front pages of newspapers standing in his sleeping room in a silk dressing-gown reading a newspaper. This was intended to repress the rumor that Ayub was paralysed. The silk dressing-gown in the center of winter raised certain uncertainties. On 21 February. the bulletin said that Ayub was keeping a steady recovery. and was experiencing all right and comfy. On 25 February Ayub was go oning to do really good advancement. On 27 February it was announced that he would reexamine the joint services parade on 23 March. By 28 February. Ayub had to the full recovered and another image appeared. this clip in a heavy Swati coat. with the Governor of East Pakistan. The undermentioned twenty-four hours he met the Speaker of the National Assembly. and a two-minute movie of his meeting with some of the curates was telecast. On 1 March it was announced that Ayub would turn to the state. The crisis was over. The Ministers could see the President and bureaucratism was back in concern with Ayub at the helm of personal businesss. Yahya and his officers withdrew from the scene every bit softly as they had come to rule it. Power had eluded their appreciation. but non for long ; they hoped.

During this period a few Cabinet meetings were held under the chairmanship of Khwaja Shahabuddin. At none of these meetings did the Ministry of Law bring up the inquiry of ask foring the Speaker of the National Assembly to take over the maps of the President as required under the Constitution. The topic of sequence was forbidden because none of the curates wanted to incur the displeasure of Ayub or the armed forces.

By the center of March Ayub had sufficiently recovered to restart a restricted modus operandi of work. He told the Information Secretary about the ague hurting he suffered when the first incident occurred: `It was like a ruddy hot saloon piercing through my thorax. ’ He was being given heavy depressants which affected his responses. Those who met him during this period could non Help detecting that his reactions were instead probationary and his determinations uncertain.

Merely earlier Ayub suffered the bosom onslaught he had ordered the Ministry of Information to pull up a programme to observe the 10th day of remembrance of his reforms. He had convinced himself that the predominating dissatisfaction in the state was due wholly to the fact that his reforms had non been decently explained and projected to the people. A comprehensive promotion programme was hence drawn up. and it was approved by the Governors’ Conference in November 1967.

The jubilations were to get down on 1 January and stop on 27 October 1968. Ayub himself was to play the prima function in the jubilations. touring assorted parts of the state and ask foring people to fall in in the national argument to work out a consensus on of import political issues. His unwellness robbed the programme of all its significance. The programme went on for excessively long because there was nil else to make full the vacuity caused by Ayub’s physical absence from the scene. and every section got into the act to publicise its accomplishments while the newspapers encouraged them to travel on with it because it boosted their advertisement grosss. The jubilations were a great propaganda floating-point operation and the Information Secretary now became the mark of onslaught by the Opposition. After Ayub recovered he wanted the jubilations to be wound up. but by so the harm had been done.

On 17 April the Soviet Prime Minister. Aleksei Kosygin. came to Pakistan on an official visit. This was the first-ever visit of a Soviet Premier and the crowds gave Kosygin a warm welcome. much to the humiliation of American functionaries in Islamabad. Ayub’s first meeting with Kosygin was arranged in the drawing-room of his house. While Television cameras were being moved into the room the Information Secretary noticed Nawab Kalabagh’s image on the mantle. If the cameras picked up that image people might inquire why the Nawab was busying such a outstanding topographic point in Ayub’s aggregation even after his ejection from office. The image was removed from the mantle. But every bit shortly as Ayub entered the room he noticed its absence and had it restored to its original topographic point.

Subsequently. when the Information Secretary explained why the image had been removed. Ayub recalled his friendly relationship with Kalabagh with great fondness. He said in Punjabi: `Tandan tutian jar divan nain ( one time snapped the bosom strings ne’er mend ) . ’ He still retained great heat for the Nawab. The rift between the two had been caused by the nomination of Khan Bahadur Habibullah. a Karachi man of affairs. as the governing party campaigner for a bye-election in the Lyari constituency in Karachi. The Nawab despised Habibullah and supported Ghous Bukhsh Bizenjo. a outstanding Balochi leader. the rival campaigner. Some of the provincial curates besides actively campaigned against the official campaigner. Habibullah lost the election much to the irritation of Ayub. He felt the Nawab had let him down. This one incident was the cause of the Nawab’s remotion from the governorship of West Pakistan.

The meeting between Ayub and Kosygin on 18 April lasted for good over three hours. The Soviet Union signed an understanding for funding and put to deathing the steel factory undertaking in West Pakistan. An apprehension was besides reached sing the puting up of an atomic power works in East Pakistan. The Soviet Union offered aid for set uping a wireless relay nexus between Pakistan and the USSR and beyond to Europe. Prime Minister Kosygin addressed a imperativeness conference at the terminal of his visit. He said that dealingss between Pakistan and the Soviet Union would go on to better and beef up. His negotiations with Ayub had been `a duologue between two friends who were together in pursuit of ways to better dealingss and co-operation’ . He said that great recognition was due to Ayub. who went to Moscow to set up personal contacts. and to convey about friendly dealingss and co-operation in all domains between the two states. The negotiations. he said. were meant to accomplish `a detente in international tensions’ . ’

The full significance of Kosygin’s visit was non by and large realized because few people knew. at the clip. that Pakistan had ( given formal notice to the United States to take their strategic military base at Badaber near Peshawar. which had been a major cause of tenseness and misinterpretation between Pakistan and the Soviet Union. The understanding for the base had been signed in 1959 and was due to run out in 1969. The understanding provided that the rental for the base would stand automatically renewed unless notice of expiration was given 12 months in progress. Ayub gave the notice on 6 April 1968 and Kosygin arrived in Pakistan on 17 April.

Ayub had been told when he visited the Soviet Union for the first clip in 1965. that the Soviet Union could non accept the place that Pakistan was non moving in a hostile mode by leting the US to keep a military base for electronic surveillance of strategic Soviet locations. Ayub had given an indicant to the Soviet leaders that Pakistan would non regenerate the rental of the base without confer withing them. This indicant. more than anything else. was responsible for a pronounced betterment in Pakistan-USSR dealingss.

Ayub was profoundly disquieted when the US stopped the supply of weaponries to Pakistan during the 1965 War. and when the Americans declined to restart military aid in April 1967. he was left with no option but to look towards the Soviet Union for military Helpance and to spread out Pakistan’s dealingss with China. Ayub went on a 2nd visit to the Soviet Union. between 25 September and 4 October 1967. to discourse the inside informations of an understanding for the supply of Soviet weaponries to Pakistan. Ayub spent a twosome of yearss with the Soviet leaders. Brezhnev. Podgorny and Kosygin. in Volgograd and Yalta. and it was at that place that he gave them a steadfast committedness that he would end the Badaber base rental by giving the Americans due notice at the appropriate clip. To avoid any future misinterpretation. he besides confided to the Soviet leaders that he was earnestly believing of co-operating with China to build an all-weather route which would associate Gilgit in northern countries with Kashgar in Chinese Sinkiang.

Ten yearss after his return from Moscow. Ayub signed a formal understanding with China to construct the route with a length of 155 stat mis on the Kashmir side. running along the Indus River and over the Minkata Pass in the Karakoram scope. When the notice for the expiration of the rental was given. the American Ambassador sought an pressing interview with Ayub to convey to him `the great disappointment’ of his authorities. Ayub refused to yield. In the interim he made more alterations in the Cabinet. Sharifuddin Pirzada. who had taken over from Bhutto. and the Industries Minister. Altaf Hussain. were relieved of their offices for `private reasons’ . Ayub was peculiarly defeated with Pirzada. who would mutter in Cabinet meetings. and Ayub could ne’er happen out his place on any issue. Pirzada proved a resounding anticlimax after Bhutto. A utile adult male. who could ever invent some expression to acquire over a legal trouble. Ayub found him a little excessively cunning. He excelled in the art of bewilderment and Ayub was rather irritated by the manner he would travel on trimming and hedge every word. acting like the archetypical Vicar of Bray.

Ayub came to his freshly furnished office after he had recovered from his unwellness on I May 1968. in a black Rolls Royce. a gift from the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi. possibly the first illustration of Gulf largess towards Pakistani swayers. He was have oning a light Grey suit and a pink rose and looked much slimmer than earlier. He stumbled a small as he walked up the stairss but liked the new expression of his office. His return to office marked the terminal of an agonising stage. `I was non disquieted. ’ he said with an air of satisfaction. When the Information Secretary said that the people had been highly disquieted he wondered. `Why’ ? After all the disposal continued to work. ’ He did non cognize that the disposal had collapsed go forthing the ground forces hovering over its carcase. He started speaking about the demand for co-operatives in agribusiness. a topic over which he had reflected a great trade during his recuperation. His ten-day stay in the Soviet Union. during September-October 1967. had convinced him that Pakistan could accomplish autonomy in agribusiness merely through co¬operatives. He wanted to establish a run to construct up public sentiment in support of co-operative retentions: `We can give the option to bigger landlords to organize co-operatives of their ain. ’

The Agartala Conspiracy resurfaced during Ayub’s recovery. GHQ had completed its probe and the instance was ripe for test. Yahya wanted the instance to be tried by a particular tribunal. but Ayub was non happy about that because of his earlier experience with the Rawalpindi confederacy court. in which a figure of senior ground forces officers were subjected to prolonged question and cross-examination. which affected the morale of the services. ; The following twenty-four hours Yahya convened a meeting to which the Defence Minister. the Defence Secretary. the Home Secretary. the Information Secretary. the Director of Intelligence Bureau. and several senior military officers. including the Judge Advocate-General. were invited to discourse the process for the test. Yahya started by complimenting the intelligence bureaus for the fantastic occupation they had done in unearthing the confederacy against Pakistan engineered by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

This was the first clip the name of Sheikh Mujib was mentioned in connexion with the instance. Ayub wanted the civilians to be tried by ordinary tribunals and the defense mechanism forces to be dealt with under tribunal Martial. But Yahya Khan was so aroused with what his `boys’ had discovered that he wanted to do it a historic public test. He insisted that the test must be given the maximal promotion. That. the Information Secretary assured him. would non be hard because the universe Press would fall on Pakistan like vultures to rupture into the proceedings. But he cautioned Yahya that if the proceedings were to be public so the whole test must be unfastened – non merely the instance for the prosecution. The authorities should non acquire disquieted when the defense mechanism presented its instance. and the Press began foregrounding the holes in the prosecution narrative. Yahya asked the Information Secretary non to worry: `We have a unfailing instance. ’ `In that instance. ’ said the Information Secretary. `you will acquire fool-proof promotion. ’ Yahya was a small put out by that and asked the Judge Advocate-General to give the Information Secretary the sum-up of grounds to alleviate him of his anxiousness.

The sum-up of grounds was loaded with premises and guesss. There was nil to link the ‘Sheikh’ mentioned in the sum-up of grounds as the chief plotter. with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The intelligence bureaus had handily ignored the fact that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had been in prison for most of the clip when the alleged confederacy was being hatched. GHQ was outlining the imperativeness note. which would look in the newspapers the following twenty-four hours. 7 April 1968.

After that it would be impossible to recover the state of affairs. It was past the tiffin hr but the Information Secretary decided to travel and speak to Ayub before he retired for the afternoon. He told him about the meeting at GHQ and expressed his scruples about affecting Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in the confederacy without solid grounds. If the prosecution could show during the test that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had anything to make with the confederacy. the tribunal could ever indict him as a co-accused. Ayub was impressed by the statement that the `Sheikh’ in the sum-up of grounds did non needfully intend Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. He promised to talk to the Defence Minister Admiral A. R. Khan. and the Commander-in-Chief. As a consequence of Ayub’s intercession. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s name was deleted from the list of the accused.

A particular court headed by a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. S. A. Rahman. was appointed. The other members of the tribunal were M. R. Khan and Maksumul Hakim. both Judges of the Dhaka High Court. Manzur Qadir had agreed to carry on the instance for the prosecution. A few yearss subsequently another imperativeness note was issued adding the name of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman among the accused even before the test had opened. The President explained to the Information Secretary that Yahya had been told by his legal advisors that for the success of the instance Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s name must be added to the list of the accused individuals before the test opened. It was an unfortunate determination which plunged the authorities into a crisis of far-reaching effects. Yahya must hold known that the instance would detonate like a bombshell. rob the authorities of whatever credibleness it possessed. and alienate East Pakistan. possibly for good.

Ayub left for London for a medical check-up and what he called `my foremost existent vacation in 30 years’ . `He was examined by Professor Goodwin at the Hammersmith Hospital and given a clean measure of wellness. Professor Goodwin was nevertheless dubious whether it would be advisable for Ayub to set about another election run. Apart from that. he expressed full satisfaction with his advancement. Ayub had a meeting with Prime Minister Harold Wilson. and after a few yearss in London he shifted to Croydon where the British authorities had made agreements for his stay at Selsdon Park Hotel. During his stay at that place Ayub met the Conservative Party leader. Edward Heath. and had a long session with the historiographer. Arnold Toynbee. who had great esteem for Ayub’s reforms. Bhutto tried to see Ayub through the speculation of Pakistan. embassador in West Germany. Abdul Rahman. but Ayub said. ‘No: Bhutto should see me in Pakistan. non here. ’ Bhutto’s involvement in run intoing Ayub must hold been to determine the true province of his wellness on which depended his whole political game.

It was during his stay in London that Ayub had his first direct contact with East Pakistani Opposition groups. On the twenty-four hours of his reaching a big group of pupils put up a large presentation outside his hotel. It was the Agartala instance which had peculiarly annoyed the East Pakistani pupils who seemed determined to transport on a battle to salvage Mujibur Rahman and his associates from what looked similar certain strong belief. They had set up a ‘Rights of East Pakistan Defence Front’ and engaged Tom Williams Q. C. to travel to Dhaka to fall in the squad of attorneies supporting Sheikh Mujib. The British Press. excessively. was unhappy about the fortunes of the instance. The Timescommented that Mujib was ‘being charged with complicity in a secret plan alleged to hold been hatched while he was. behind bars’ . The test was to be held in Dhaka camp ‘which suggests that it is to hold something of a military backoround’ . ‘The presentations outside Ayub’s hotel became a day-to-day modus operandi from which he did non get away even in Croydon.