Tikka Khan

Tikka Khan (10 February 1915 – 28 March 2002) was a Pakistani four-star rank general who served as the first chief of the army staff from 1972 to 1976. He, along with Yahya Khan, is considered a chief architect of the 1971 Bengali genocide, occurring under his governorship over East Pakistan, for which he is referred to as the Butcher of Bengal in Bangladesh. Gaining a commission in 1940 as an artillery officer in the British Indian Army to participate in World War II, he rose to command the 8th and 15th infantry divisions. In 1969, he was appointed as the commander of IV Corps while acting as martial law administrator in West Pakistan under President Yahya Khan. In 1971, he took over the command of army's Eastern Command in East Pakistan and was appointed as Governor of East Pakistan, where he oversaw the planning and the military deployments to execute the military operations to quell the liberation war efforts by the Awami League. After commanding the II Corps in the war with India in 1971, Tikka Khan was promoted to four-star rank and appointed as the first chief of army staff of the Pakistan Army in 1972. As an army chief, Tikka Khan provided support to the Pakistan nuclear programme alongside bureaucrat Ghulam Ishaq Khan. Upon retirement from the military in 1976, he was subsequently appointed as National Security Advisor by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, only to be removed in 1977 as a result of enforced martial law. In the 1980s, he remained active as a political worker of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and emerged as its leader when appointed as Governor of Punjab after the general elections held in 1988. His tenure ended when President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's government in 1990,...