A former army general’s book recreates key episodes and battles of India’s 1971 war with Pakistan

Eastern Command, 3 October to 26 November 1971

Headquarters Eastern Command (India) had in the meantime set up a series of wireless interception stations to lock on to radio transmissions between Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Dhaka. General Jacob believed that “being warned was being forearmed”. These wireless intercepting stations had been set up in September 1971.

All intercepted transmissions were encrypted in high-level codes, and all that the Indians had was a mass of encrypted data on the spools of their Grundig tape recorders. The encrypted information made no sense whatsoever. It was now early November, and General Jacob was desperately looking for something meaningful to link the stray bits of information that would help him to connect the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle and understand what the Pakistanis were up to.

On 8 November, Major Dharam Dev Datt, the officer commanding one of the intercepting wireless stations, was the image of concentration as he slowly turned the knobs of the Racal RA 150 radio receiver in an attempt to latch on to the messages between Karachi and Dhaka. A sudden increase in the number of messages on that day meant that there was something big in the offing, and it was crucial…

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