On 1 January 1972, a fortnight after the Pakistan army's surrender in Dacca (now known as Dhaka) signalling Bangladesh's liberation, some 300 civil servants in Islamabad submitted a petition, ‘The West Pakistan Class 1 Civil Servant Petition’, to President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto asking ‘to remove all Bengali officials immediately from government secretariats’ and, similarly, to recall ‘all East Pakistan officials in the Pakistan foreign missions and embassies….’ They were considered dangerous and were possibly communicating with ‘enemies’, and they were to be secluded from the rest of the public and confined to one locality in Islamabad, the petition continued, so that ‘their activities and movements could be easily checked’. Further, it carried on, ‘interning allowance admissible to East Pakistani officials working in West Pakistan should be disallowed’, and all their movable and immovable assets, including ‘gold whether in the pockets, family possessions or with the individuals should be taken … till the situation is well under control’. This remarkable petition, most of whose signatories were Punjabi bureaucrats, concluded thus:

This petition irrevocably changed the position of Bengalis residing in West Pakistan, who were no longer regarded as fellow citizens but as disenfranchised citizens or enemies of the state.