A part of history we forgot

‘Missing in Action… Presumed Dead.’

Have you ever paused to feel the weight of those five words? Missing in Action. Presumed Dead. They may sound bureaucratic, emotionless, almost routine. But behind them lie 54 unfinished lives, Indian soldiers who fought the 1971 war with Pakistan and never returned.

For over fifty-three years, their families have lived suspended between hope and despair, patriotism and betrayal, asking questions no government has had the courage or perhaps the will to answer. Their stories have faded from our collective memory, but their pain hasn’t. It lingers like a wound that refuses to heal.

These families are not chasing a mirage. Their belief is not born of denial. There is evidence stark, documented, and repeatedly ignored. From eyewitness accounts of captured Indian soldiers in Pakistani jails, to letters sent home in the months following the ceasefire, to testimonies by former prisoners of war who returned in 1973 – there are enough trails to demand truth and accountability.

In 1972, India released over 90,000 Pakistani prisoners of war under the Simla Agreement, believing Pakistan would reciprocate in good faith. But Pakistan denied holding any Indian soldiers from the 1971 conflict. For decades, families have pleaded for access to their missing sons and husbands names like Flight Lieutenant V.V Tambay, Flight Lieutenant L.M. Sasoon, Major A.K. Ghosh, Captain Saurabh Singh, and others yet every effort has hit a diplomatic wall of silence.

Several governments have raised the issue on paper. Committees were formed, files exchanged, and promises made in Parliament. In 2015, India once again urged Pakistan to release information about the 54 prisoners believed to be in their custody, citing the Geneva Conventions and human rights obligations. Nothing moved.

Meanwhile, the mothers grew old waiting. The wives spent their youth in uncertainty neither widows nor married women in the eyes of society. The children grew up calling a photograph “Papa.” Some of those mothers have since died clutching the uniforms of sons who never came home.

Yet, as a nation, we have looked away. We talk about “never forgetting our heroes,” but we have, in fact, forgotten 54 of them in enemy jails. We celebrate anniversaries of victory, we make films about wars but we remain silent on the most shameful chapter of all: that India never brought her own soldiers back.

The families are not asking for sympathy anymore. They are asking for state accountability, transparency, and moral courage. They want India to pursue the matter with the same tenacity with which it seeks international justice in other cases. They want answers to a question that should haunt every citizen of this country – ‘Where are the 54?

Because until that answer is found, the war of 1971 will never truly be over.

Think about it.

Jai Hind

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