Muhammad Akram

Major Muhammad Akram NH (Urdu: محمد اکرم; 4 April 1938 – 5 December 1971) was a Pakistani military officer and the sixth recipient of Pakistan's highest military award, the Nishan-e-Haider, which he was awarded posthumously for his actions of valour in the Battle of Hilli during the 1971 India-Pakistan war. Muhammad Akram was born on 4 April 1938 at Dingha, Gujrat District, into a Punjabi Awan family of Village Naka Kalan (District Jhelum). He was a military brat and his father, Malik S. Muhammad, was an enlisted personnel in the British Indian Army who later retired as a Havildar, an army n.c.o., in the Pakistan Army. After securing his graduation from a local middle school in Nakka Kalan, Akram enrolled at the Military College Jhelum– an ROTC and an army's OCS in Jhelum, Punjab. In 1953, he dropped out of the Military College Jhelum due to his father's deployment, and had to take the High School equivalency exam where he took examinations in geography and intermediate education. In 1956, he was enlisted in the Pakistan Army and posted with the 8th Punjab Regiment near India-Pakistan border. In 1959, Muhammad Akram was selected to attend the Pakistan Military Academy but only spent a semester after being deployed in East-Pakistan as a Naik (equivalent to Corporal). He received commission in the Army through his years of attendance at the army's OCS in Jhelum in 1961 in the Frontier Force Regiment, and was attached to the East Pakistan Rifles from 1963 to 1965. He was commissioned in the Frontier Force Regiment of Pakistan Army on 13 October 1963. In 1965, Capt. Akram was stationed in different parts of the West-Pakistan before being deployed in East-Pakistan as a quartermaster with the Frontier Force Regiment till 1967–68.