Who Stole The Bengali Treasure ?

 I confess that this is an unsubstantiated story from the annals of the 1971 war, liberation of Bangla Desh. Perhaps it is just innuendo, an invitation for libel. I am just a silly story teller, more fiction than facts, but you perhaps may find it difficult to figure out where the facts end and the fiction begins !!

 After the surrender ceremony on 16 Dec 1971, in which Lt Gen Niazi unconditionally surrendered, Lt Gen Sagat Singh (4 Corps Cdr, who masterminded and facilitated the quick defeat of E Pak) was left behind in Dacca, as martial law administrator, with a few soldiers to manage on his own, surrounded by enemy still bristling with arms and heartfelt hate. All other ‘Brass’ who attended the surrender ceremony (including the 'Silver', Arora’s wife)  flew off to Agartala same evening on their way back to Calcutta. By and large the rest of 4 Corps and 101 Com Zone were deployed outside Dacca. Others were still on the move barely 100 km from their launching pads on the border. 2 &   33 Corps which were as to have been the spear heads were stuck in the mud.

Around 17 Dec evening, the B’Desh Govt in exile, with 4 or 5 IAS officers to assist them, flew into Dacca from Calcutta to take control and establish modicum of civilian command and control. Sagat Singh issued orders for de-induction of troops just after the ‘Guard Of Honour’ for Manekshaw, I think two or three days later. By then the Mukti Bahini and EBR had taken control of all treasuries in the new Bangla Desh and found the coffers empty. Led to a lot of heart burn and Indian Army was blamed for looting the treasury. Reason why Sagat ordered check posts and physical check of all officers and men returning to India, exemplary punishments for anyone found with any form of loot. Lot of honourable men including 3 of Sagat’s senior and illustrious commanders and friends were victims. Wait, let me tell you the story in proper sequence, as it evolved.

Sagat’s main concern at the time, when Maj Gen Jacob was twisting Niazi’s arm to sign on the dotted line for unconditional surrender vis-à-vis conditional surrender as Niazi wanted, his concerns were probably the mustering and safe transfer of 93,000 odd POWs to Indian territory before they were butchered by Mukti Bahini, to maintain law & order in East Pak, immediate withdrawal of Indian forces, and finally peaceful transfer of power to the civilian authority in Bangla Desh. Perhaps Sagat wanted to go home, his job well done, and not stay back in conquered territory like Mc Arthur or Eisenhower. So he hastened his pre-departure tasks with zestful efficiency and with great élan, to the full satisfaction of the hastily assembled provisional Govt Of B’Desh.  Everything went well in the 71 war, and after the war in B’Desh, as well as the subsequent transfer of power. All except one simple thing. The B’Desh treasury was empty. That offset the goodwill and bonhomie that Bangla Deshis had for Indians. The rumours spread far and wide with whispering rapidity, the Bengalis began to view Indians not as saviours, but as rapists and looters, as bad as the Paki army.

B’Desh accused Indian army of pillage and loot despite the fact that not a single case was filed or reported, and there were check posts at all exit points manned by Indian Military Police, accompanied by B’Deshi police, with explicit orders from Sagat to search and arrest all personnel who indulged in any form of repatriation of loot. To retain the honour of the Indian army, under the unwavering eye of Manekshaw, Sagat and the Mil Police perhaps became overzealous.  They did not spare even very senior and illustrious military officers returning to India. Even few bottles of Single Malt whisky, that were presented to Indian army officials by Paki army officers as well as EBR / Mukti Bahini, were confiscated as stolen contraband. There were exemplary court marshals and several senior officers, honourable men who had fought the war with distinction, they were asked to leave dishonourably, or were cashiered.

So if it were not the Indians, who looted and emptied the treasury in B’Desh, who did it ? I simply wish to clear the needle of suspicion and an unjust blemish on the Indian army as well as the man in charge, Sagat Singh, perhaps by connecting the dots of truth with a few lies, artistic licence of a fiction writer.

 It is truth that RAW had practically ceased to operate in B’Desh after the purge in Jun/Jul 1970, all our covert operatives in B’Desh were arrested, tortured and put to death.  Few intelligence operatives were inducted immediately after the surrender, and hence they would not have had the knowledge or wherewithal to run off with the treasure. So that makes me conclude that the ones who ran off with the Bengali treasure was none other than the ISI. And the man who can perhaps give a clue about the missing treasure is none other than Parvez Mushraff, who as a commando, special forces Major, was an ISI clandestine operative in East Pak in the closing stages of that war. Several Mukti Banhini and EBR veterans that I talked to recollect seeing Mushraff in Dacca in the closing stages of the war.  How was he inducted into Dacca despite the Naval and Air blockade by Indians, who knows ? Perhaps by submarine ?

 So how did the ISI do it and what happened to the treasure ? Perhaps few others who could explain, if they are so inclined to do it, is the crew of ‘SS Buckeye State’, a merchant ship owned and operated by the CIA that was used to ferret out the treasure along with CIA and ISI operatives out of the war zones, from Chittagong. It has a history of doing such things in WW-II, especially stealing the Japanese gold cashe from Philippines with the help of the infamous Ferdinand Marcos.  But let me not jump the gun. 

Hamoodar Rehman was an elderly, conscientious and sagacious Paki Supreme Court judge, empowered and appointed by Govt Of Pak, after the 71 war, to enquire into the follies that led them to lose half their country.  His ‘Report On Commission Of Inquiry Into 1971 War’ (Vanguard Books, Lahore), is perhaps the most officious book of guilt as it can get, castigating those Pakis who deserved blame, and praising those who fought with valour. To find the Bengali treasure, which was not one of his charter or brief, one has to read between the lines of his report.

After the death of Jinnah, soon after Paki independence, Paki politics and the military hierarchy veered, it became an all Punjabi show. The diaspora of Sindhies, the Baluch, the Kashmiris or the Bengalis were shunned, perhaps like the OBC mentality in India. The political parochialism and fratricide finally led to the Army under Ayub Khan to take over controls in 1958. After 12 yrs of ‘Martial Law’, sometime 1970, Gen Yahya Khan had enough and decided to revert Pak to democracy, perhaps with a revision of the Paki constitution to keep the military still in the decision making loop.  The precipitator of such a policy was Zulfakir Ali Bhuto, a dynamic, vitriolic and very ambitious Paki Punjabi political, who was expected to win the election.  To every one’s surprise, the Awami League in East Pak, with Mujibur Rehman in the lead, won a resounding victory, purely because of the political dynamics of vote bank, the voters in East Pak surpassed those in the west by 40%. Mujibur then caught a flight via Colombo and rushed to Islamabad to stake claim to form a Govt with himself as a Prime Minister of East and West Pak. Bhuto got Yahya Khan to put Mujibur in prison on charges of treason, it was unacceptable to the Punjabi mentality to have a Bengali rule Pak, West or East !! It sparked the civil war in East Pak.

 Yahya Khan then appointed the ‘Butcher Of Baluchistan’ Gen Tikka Khan as the martial law administrator in East Pak, inducted a large number of troops and started a crackdown. The crackdown soon turned into an enthusiastic ethnic cleansing which had only one historic parallel, the Jewish purge by Hitler, or in a smaller context Bosnia, with Bihari Muslims as collaborators to vanquish Bengalis Muslims of all kind.  The mass genocide, exodus, search and seizure, UNICIF, Red Cross and World Bank Aid, the CIA funding, all these enriched the coffers of East Paki treasury in bullion, US Dollars in cash, precious art and artefacts, all of them stored in safe houses, mostly in and around Dacca. Maj Parvez Mushraff from the crack special forces SSG seconded to ISI, assisted by few SSG and West Paki EBR personnel was in-charge of safekeeping of this treasure. You have to read between the lines of  Mushraff's autobiography to get the drift.

 None could be trusted in East Pak since Mar 1971. The Bengalis officials including EBR (East Paki Bengla Rifles, hard core military, mostly officered by west Pakis or a few Bengali officers whose wives and children were hostages in West Pak) began to desert or abscond, most of them heading for the Indian border. The brutal Paki Military police, Punjabis to the last man, took over policing and the ISI took over the clandestine activities, the encounters and the ‘Ab Tak Chappan’. Due to the naval blockade, and prevention of over flights, only a few could filter in or out via Colombo. The young Maj Parvez Mushraff, a dynamic zealot, was then an important functionary of the ISI in Dacca, though his exact role at that time, besides guarding the treasure, is not known.

 A few days after the official war was declared on 3/4 Dec 71, when Indian Kilo force (RAW Military Establishment 22 under Maj Gen Uban & BSF under Rustomji)  began to pose a threat to Laksham and the escape route to Chittagong, the ISI decided to move the Bengali treasure from Dacca to Chittagong by rail. The treasure was shifted, staging through Lalksham, by a special train travelling nonstop, mostly at night. At Lalksham, a very fortified staging post, Mushraff and his small contingent of ‘treasure guards’ were attacked by two hunters from IAF led by Wg Cdr Vinod Nebb VrC & Bar. Though Nebb managed to destroy most of the fortifications, Mushraff and the Bengali treasure were safe in deep underground bunkers. They moved again at night to Chittagong, unmolested by IAF.  At Chittagong they awaited the arrival of ‘SS Buckeye State’.

 In it’s chequered history of 35 yrs, till it sank, or was purposefully sunk off Panama in 1978 (perhaps due to US congressional investigation and hearings), SS Buckeye State had been registered and re-registered under 28 flags, under different names, mostly spurious offshore companies owned by the CIA. The superstructure had undergone frequent modifications to make its silhouette different around 32 times. It was a very powerful flat bottomed ship capable of sailing in shallow water and high speeds in open sea with retractable hydraulically operated stabilisers. It was retrofitted with every modern electronic gadgets that CIA could buy.  It had done everything from infiltration and exfiltration of CIA agents and worldwide political dissidents, gun running, opium smuggling, cash delivery and the most illustrious thing that it did in its lifetime was to run off with the  Japanese cache of bullion and treasure from Philippines after the Japanese surrender in 1945, with the assistance of Marcos, then a leader of the underground. The incredible Japanese treasure had helped CIA to grow to be the only intelligence agency, besides ISI, which does not need Govt funding to conduct its worldwide operations, they have enough money of their own in Swiss banks. Around first week Dec 1971, SS Buckeye State (a new name and a new silhouette) sailed from Taiwan, through the Malacca Straits into the Indian Ocean, ducked the Indian Navy blockade by skirting along the Malaysian and Burmese coasts and sailed into Chittagong around 8 or 9^th Dec 71.

 Due to dock worker’s strike, sabotage by Bengali frogmen led by an Indian Navy Officer Lt Cdr Akku Roy, strafing by a Sea Hawk ex Vikrant which destroyed some of its superstructure, the loading of the treasure on Buckeye was delayed and the ghost ship was caught up in Chittagong port when Niazi surrendered on 16 Dec 71.  Tremendous pressure was then put on GoI by the US Ambassador in Delhi to allow the ship to sail. No mention was made of its purpose of visit to Chittagong or cargo manifest.  None in India bothered to ask what was 'Buckeye' doing in Chittagong. It sailed on 18 Dec, two days after the war ended, with CIA deep cover operatives and Maj Mushraf with his escort guarding the Bengali treasure below deck. In the post war euphoria, the Indian Navy even offered a mine sweeper as escort. Off Trincomalee coast, the escort said good bye to Buckeye and returned to Vizag.

 It is said that a Paki Navy gun boat intercepted Buckeye off Makran coast when it was trying to duck and sail off to Dubai. Buckeye was then escorted to Karachi. Mushraff was given a gallantry award, and the treasure transferred to a vault in Karcahi. Buckeye was allowed to sail off into the yonder, ‘Pirates Of The Caribbean’ world of CIA.

 The subsequent Indo–Pak Shimla conference did not go as well as Bhutto desired. On the last day the politically shrewd Bhutto requested Mrs Gandhi for an hour long private tet-a-tet, all by themselves. After the tet-a-tet, despite having 93,000 prisoners and many thousand square miles of Paki territory in the Indian kitty, it was perceived afterwards that it was Bhutto who dictated the final Shimla agreement, not Indians.  India gave it all away, including the swaths of hard won, tactically most important real estate, stupefying the team of Indian interlocutors including those from Indian Army MO Directorate. The line of control (LOC), Indo-Pak border, it was incredibly reverted back to pre-war days despite the mournful yodelling from the petrified MO directorate. Perhaps the Bengali treasure was an incentive, deposited as Congress party funds in Swiss bank account ?  The ISI is very clever, they would not have given all of it away, perhaps just a part of the bullion.  

 Three decades later, at Agra after the Kargil war, Mushraff now Paki President asked our then PM Vajpai for a similar private tet-a-tet, all by themselves. Perhaps the sum offered, the balance of the Bengali Treasure that was not squandered by ISI, perhaps it was not enough to buy off Kashmir. In 1847, after the first Punjab War, when Gulab Singh bought Jammu & Kashmir from Henry Lawrence of East India Company, the price was just Rs 70 lks.  With inflation and compound interest, perhaps Vajpai deemed that the price for Kashmir was everything in Paki treasury + Paki GDP for next five years + the balance of Bengali treasure, all of it to be transferred into BJP’s Swiss bank account ? I have great regards for Vajpai, though slow witted, he was good at maths !! Part of the Bengali treasure is perhaps still safe in Switzerland, out of the reach of the politicals in B’Desh as well as India. It is being put to good use by the Pakis, to conduct the proxy war, ‘kill by thousand cuts, and the new found love Jihad’ in Kashmir, and elsewhere in India !!!

 God bless Lt Gen Sagat Singh. May he RIP. He neither stole anything, nor did he allow the Indian Army to steal anything, especially the Bengali treasure. A few woman did offer themselves to Sagat but I believe without any coercion. He was after all like Julius Caesar, irresistible to the Cleopatras of those days and we really cannot complain about that sort of privileges of a conquering hero who accepted affections of the gallant ladies like a true gentleman, with total discretion !!

 Cheers

CYCLIC