Sengupta’s days in confinement
DACCA, June 24.—“I don’t care if they keep me looked up for year if only they let the children go, the Indian Deputy High Commissioner here. Mr. Sen Gupta, said yesterday, reports AP.
He has spent 51 days in confinement.
Mr. Gupta, 55, and 241 other Indian diplomats, wives and children, including two born under restriciton in May-are virtual hostage in their houses here.
Mr. Gupta told the AP over the telephone in first interview since the Pakistan Government ordered him confined on May 3 “I am in good spirits but very, very unhappy about the children, most of them stuck up in apartments.”
The Pakistani Ammy, guarding his two-storey villa in the fashionable Gulshan residential district, refused to permit newsmen to visit him.
He said : “Things are not at all good. I have told my government I am prepared for the worst.”
Mr. Gupta said he practised yoga to keep fit, listened to one Calcutta station on the broken radio he said the Pakistanis would not permit him to have repaired.
To get a haircut, he wrote a formal letter to the Pakistani foreign office which refused to permit him to travel 8 km away from Hotel Intercontinental.
He said the Pakistanis refused to send the barber to him and he refused to patronise a streetside barber because of the danger of dirt.
A Pakistani spokesman said a barber from the hotel would be permitted to visit the house—but in the meantime Mr. Gupta has not had a haircut for more than two months.
“I’ve lost a little weight but it was good for me,” he said. “I am in unbelievably good health. I am 55 but to look at me you would think I’m 38 or 39.
“I’m not allowed out; I have no milk supply.”
The Pakistanis would not let German friends send me over a bottle of whiskey.”
Mr. Gupta said once a day his servant escorted by four armed guards visited the nearby market to buy food. He lived in a house with two servants, four civilian Indian guards and one driver.
All were confined and the servant, when passing through the house gate was always searched.
The diplomat said he was better off than most other mission members who are distributed among eight other houses elsewhere in Dacca.
“Some people are cramped in two or three rooms. The children are not permitted out of the houses, not even to attend school.”
Mr. Gupta can see no member of his staff although anyone can telephone him. He claimed Iranian, Nepalese, German and Russian diplomats here were refused permission to see him. The outgoing US Consul-General, Mr. Blood, and the British Deputy High Commissioner, Mr. Sergeant, were allowed to bid him farewell.
The dispute started in April when East Bengali members of the Pakistani Deputy High Commission in Calcutta, including the Deputy High Commissioner, Mr. Hussain Ali, declared their allegiance to Bangladesh.
The Pakistanis closed the Calcutta Mission and ordered the Dacca High Commission closed on April 26.
Mr. Gupta’s wife left Dacca on April 16. One daughter is in London and two others in New Delhi. He has had no word from them and no mail from anyone since the Dacca mail strike which started in February and ended in March when the turmoil further delayed the post.
He is not allowed to receive mail now and is permitted one English language Dacca newspaper daily.
He said he had run out of books to read. “I find it difficult to pass the time,” he said.
Reference: Hindustan Standard 26.6.1971