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Context In the 1971 India - Pakistan war, Pakistan's submarine - PNS (Pakistan Navy Ship) GHAZI, was destroyed and sunk off the coast of Vishakhapatnam (India's Naval Base on the East Coast facing the Bay of Bengal) sometime between December 3, 1971 (the day Pakistani Air Force fighter planes attacked major air bases in India, and started the war), and December 5, 1971. India claimed that Ghazi was destroyed and sunk in course of Naval operations, by INS Rajput (a guided missile destroyer of the Indian Navy). This Naval victory was widely publicized by the Indian Navy and the Government, as part of its war time propaganda to demoralize the enemy - Pakistan, and to raise the morale in India in general. However, with passage of time, the credibility of this claim waned, as various agencies - individuals who saw action in the Naval war, and war historians delved deep into the information available. To this day, it is not clear at all, as to how the GHAZI sank.  ...

Captain Mullah was commanding a sea vessel of the Indian Navy - a frigate "INS Khukri" during the war. His ship was part of a squadron that was tasked to seek and destroy Pakistani ships and submarines. On the night of December 9, 1971, INS Khukri was hit by torpedoes fired from a Pakistani submarine, and started sinking. Realizing this, Captain Mullah ordered to crew - some 300 officers and sailors - to abandon ship. He also realized that many men were trapped in the sinking vessel below the deck. Unmindful of this personal safety, and choosing to stay with the ship when he could have opted to save himself, he took it upon himself to personally supervise the rescue of the trapped men. As Genl Cardozo related the story - "being the man that he was, he knew that it was not right for him to save himself while his sailors went to a watery grave". In those final moments when the ship sank, Captain Mullah helped as many as he could, staying on the bridge of th...