April 5, 2003	Saturday	Safar 2, 1424

NEW DELHI, April 4: India’s most decorated former army chief Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw has repeated his assertion that the prime minister of his day, the late Indira Gandhi, had feared he would stage a military coup against her in the aftermath of the 1971 war with Pakistan, newspaper reports said on Friday.

They said Mr Manekshaw, in his just released biographical film, recounts that soon after the victory over Pakistan, he was mobbed by admirers all over the country and often asked when he was going to take over the reins of power in India.

The field marshal, who was feted on Thursday on his 90th birthday, said rumours of a coup had become so strong that he was called by Mrs Indira Gandhi and confronted over the reports.

“When I walked into the prime minister’s chamber in Parliament House, Mrs Gandhi was looking forlorn and directly asked me whether I was trying to stage a coup to topple her,” he said in a direct narration in the film, titled ‘In war and Peace — The Life of Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw’.

His reply was direct and professionally quaint. “Madam Prime Minister, don’t you think I would not prove to be a worthy replacement,” he said, asserting that there was no move by the army to stage a coup.

The news reports quoted Mr Manekshaw as regretting that India had lost a “golden opportunity” to solve the Kashmir issue in 1972.

At the Shimla summit, when Mrs Indira Gandhi had “let off the late Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto” with a mere promise on the issue, India had held all the strong cards in the shape of a hundred thousand Pakistani prisoners of war and some territory on the western front, he said.