NEWSLINKS US EDITION SOUTH ASIA COLUMNISTS DIARY SPECIALS INTERVIEWS CAPITAL BUZZ REDIFF POLL DEAR REDIFF THE STATES ELECTIONS ARCHIVES SEARCH REDIFF
A former governor of Pakistan's Punjab province, the 87-year-old Khan died on Thursday. He leaves behind three sons and two daughters.
Gen Khan was laid to rest with full military honours at the army graveyard in Rawalpindi.
Gen Khan was appointed chief martial law administrator of East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, by the country's military ruler, Gen Yahya Khan, who had ordered a crackdown on the liberation movement led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Under Gen Tikka Khan's command, the military carried out a murderous assault on Dacca University, hotbed of the Bangladeshi liberation struggle, and the Mukti Bahini on the night of March 25, 1971, killing hundreds of youths.
The military carried out similar attacks in other parts of East Pakistan, killing thousands more.
After East Pakistan seceded and Bangladesh was established in 1971, then prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto promoted Khan to the rank of general and made him chief of army staff on March 3, 1972, replacing Gen Gul Hasan.
The appointment was seen as a sign of Bhutto's willingness to use force against his opponents within the country. Gen Khan's first task was to crack down on the people of Baluchistan. A Pakistani columnist then wrote, 'He boasted of strangling one Baluchi with one hand while bayonetting another and kicking a third.'
Soon after taking over as army chief, Gen Khan raised two divisions and launched a mobilisation programme in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, which led to the formation of the National Guard in December 1972.
But his appointment as army chief was also one of the reasons for a major revolt by young officers. Two years after his retirement in 1974, he joined the Pakistan People's Party and became special assistant on national security to Bhutto.
During her first tenure as prime minister, Benazir Bhutto appointed him the governor of Punjab.
Born in 1915 in Mamdot (Rawalpindi), Tikka Khan passed out of the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, in 1940. He fought in the Second World War in Burma and the Sahara and in 1946 returned to the academy as an instructor. After Partition, he joined the Pakistan Military Academy as instructor.
After graduating from Quetta's Command and Staff College in 1948-49, he was made an artillery regiment commander.
More reports from Pakistan
Tell us what you think of this report
