The Indian Defence Ministry, has marked December 14,1971 as most eventful day in the Indo-Park war of 1971, since the operation on that day hastened the course of events and brought the war in the then east Pakistan to a dramatic end and shattered the morale in East Pakistan, within the span of a few minutes.
Dr A.M. Malik, the then Governor of East Pakistan, was scheduled to chair an important meeting with his civilian and military officers and East Pak leaders at 1200 hrs on December 14, 1971 in the conference hall at Government House, Dhaka. Barely 45 minutes before the scheduled time for its commencement, i.e., at 1115 hrs, India’s Eastern Air Command received information about the high level meeting that would take momentous decisions on the course of action to be adopted to save the situation. Since the destruction of the focal point of the enemy’s ‘central nervous system’ was likely to paralyse its entire war machinery, Eastern Air Command was ordered to carry out a lightning attack on Government House, Dhaka, while the meeting was in progress.
MiG 21s and Hunters from Guwahati (Assam) and Hasimara (West Bengal) were immediately alerted. Since only a few minutes were left for the meeting to commence, the pilots, were briefed with the help of tourist map of Dhaka before they were scrambled. At 1255 hrs, by which time the meeting had been in progress for less than an hour, the IAF aircraft arrived on the scene and struck. Four MiGs attacked the Government House with rockets and scored direct hits on the conference hall, followed immediately by another successful rocket attack by two more MiGs and, a few minutes later, by yet another attack by two Hunters.
The sudden and spectacular attack carried out with pin-point accuracy and which destroyed a one-third of the Government House and caused severe damage to the rest of the building, was a turning point in the course of events towards the closing stages of the war. It so completely unnerved and demoralised the persons present at the meeting that the very head of the East Pakistan Government Dr A.M. Malik, along with his entire cabinet, resigned then and there.
Dhaka University
Similarly, on the afternoon of December14, 1971, Eastern Air Command received a message from Eastern Command Army, stating that Pak troops had occupied the Dhaka University campus, and indicating the specific buildings in which they were concentrating. An air attack was immediately mounted, but the aircraft experienced heavy small arms fire from within the buildings. The next day, i.e., on December 15, 1971, forty sorties of MiGs and Hunters were flown to carry out relentless attacks on the buildings in which Pak troops were still hiding. Sustained bombing and strafing of the enemy hideout during the day yielded the desired result and by the evening ground fire had virtually stopped, indicating that resistance by Pak troops had been overcome.
Since these buildings were surrounded by numerous other buildings which had been declared as ‘neutral zones’ or ‘protected places’ the buildings selected as targets had to be very carefully located and attacked. It goes to the credit of the IAF pilots that there was not a single instance of an inadvertent attack on buildings and structures outside the target areas.
