More than twenty months after Bangladesh's liberation in December 1971, over a million people across the subcontinent were still held as hostages and bargaining chips. At stake in this tri-partite negotiation were three groups, namely the Biharis in Bangladesh, the Bengalis in Pakistan and the Pakistani POWs in India. Their respective numbers were hotly contested, as were the competing political narratives surrounding their repatriation. Why did their entwined fates linger on for so long before their respective repatriations? An analysis of the now-available archives shows the critical component that their repatriation was in the political negotiations after the war between its three protagonists – Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and Indira Gandhi. This chapter examines the details of the diplomatic negotiations, the actual mechanics underlying these exchanges, the reasons for the failure of the repatriation programme and the final agreement on this. The findings show how Bhutto was able to successfully bargain the Bengalis with the POWs while leaving behind the Biharis in Bangladesh. Conversely, Mujib sought the repatriation of Bengalis in Pakistan in exchange for the Biharis, while insisting on prosecuting Pakistani POWs for ‘war crimes’ under principles akin to the Nuremberg Trials. As for India, it intended to cash in the POWs to crack the Jammu and Kashmir dispute alongside its hope of reducing the strength of the Pakistani army for good.

‘Three Hostage Groups’

On 18 April 1972, Mujib assured the Bangladesh parliament that the government was doing everything possible to return all Bengalis held captive by Pakistan, explaining his ‘personal letters’ to world leaders in this regard.