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TIME Correspondent William Stewart paid a visit to Boyra last week. "Refugee camps are scattered along the road, but there are no soldiers in sight," he cabled. "In fact, not until we reach the small city is there any sign of fighting. We sit down in a semicircle in front of the briefer—Lieut. Colonel C.L. Proudfoot. In a blazing Bengal sun are three Pakistani tanks (U.S.-made Chaffees) and an odd assortment of captured materiel: American machine guns and Chinese ammunition. Proudfoot explains that Pakistani tanks have been probing the border near Boyra since Nov. 17. On the night of Nov. 20-21, he said, a number of tanks were heard approaching Boyra. The tanks reached and began firing on Indian positions. A squadron of 14 Indian tanks (Soviet-made PT 76s) crossed into East Pakistan to outflank the Pakistani squadron. The battle raged four or five miles into East Pakistan. When the smoke cleared, three Pakistani tanks had been trapped in India, and another eight were reported destroyed. The Indians claimed a loss of only one tank."
The Indian and Pakistani accounts differed in a number of details. Initially, Pakistani spokesmen in Islamabad told of 100,000 and then of 200,000 Indian troops pouring across the border at half a dozen points. Those figures were considerably exaggerated. Major General M.H. Ansari, Pakistan commander in the Jessore sector, told newsmen that the Indian guerrilla forces had lost 200 to 300 dead and twice as many wounded, but that they had managed to recover all the bodies; that would be quite a feat under any circumstances. Ansari showed journalists a letter stamped "14th Punjab Regiment" and an Indian soldier's diary picked up in the course of the fighting.
There was no disagreement over the essentials of the battle and its dangerous significance. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi went before Parliament in New Delhi and acknowledged that Indian troops had entered East Pakistan "to repulse a Pakistani attack" near the border. She also corroborated the report that India had shot down three Pakistani Sabre jets. Mrs. Gandhi added that she would not emulate Pakistani President Agha Mohammed Yahya
Khan by declaring a national emergency —a move that was more symbolic than substantive for West Pakistanis since their country had been under martial law since March 1969. But later that day Indian defense officials announced a significant change in policy: henceforth Indian troops would be allowed to enter the East "in self-defense."
Diplomatic Flurries
The elements of this supercharged situation have become all too familiar to the rest of the world:
1) a swiftly growing independence movement in the much exploited eastern wing of Pakistan;
2) the ruthless crackdown by Ya+hya's tough West Pakistani troops last March and a resulting exodus that sent nearly 10 million Bengali refugees flooding into India;
3) a flourishing guerrilla movement that now numbers as many as 100,000 adherents, fervently committed to the creation of a free Bangla Desh (Bengal Nation) in East Pakistan, and all but openly aided by New Delhi.