The decisive Indo-Pakistan-Bangladesh war entered its second day today with heavy fighting raging in all the sectors of Bangladesh. Even from the safe distance of Dhaka we could hear heavy field-guns pounding on each other’s posts in the border region where fighting was going on in full swing.
The brave boys of our Mukti Bahini joined the hand to hand combat with such courage that surprised the Pakistani soldiers. In Dhaka, we could see one or two Indian Mig fighter planes in the sky of Dhaka. Some old Pakistani Saber Jet fighters came in pursuit of the Indian fighter planes but they were no match with the superior Indian fighter planes.
To Saber jets were shot down by the Migs and they flew back to their base. In the Jessore and some other borders some old Pakistani tanks tried to resist the advancing Indian high tech tanks. In a couple of hours most of the Pakistani tanks were totally destroyed. As large number of Pakistani soldiers along with local Razakars surrendered to the Indian army. This news boosted the morale of the Mukti Bahini when they heard this over the radio. The battles in other sectors continued to cause heavy loss of life on the Pakistan side.
The war on the West Pakistan border took an interesting turn today. On this day, Indian Navy sank three vessels near the Pakistani port city of Karachi. This was known as operation Trident. The stars of operation Trident were the Soviet built Osa missile boats, fitted with Styx Missiles. Ins Kiltan, Katchal, Nipat, Nighat and Veer of the Indian Navy sank PNS Khaibar killing 222 Pakistani sailors, and PNS Muhafiz killing 33 Pakistani sailors. This news also highly boosted the morale of the Bengali Navy officers and personnel. They planned to organize similar attacks on Pakistani patrol boats on our rivers. At later stage, some daring missions were launched by our brave Naval guerrillas causing considerable damage to the Pakistanis.