Sandeep Unnithan and Commodore AW Chowdhury in conversation with Commodore Srikant Kesnur and opening remarks by H.E. Vikram Kumar Doraiswami, The High Commissioner of India to Bangladesh

Commemorating the anniversary of the 1971 war between East and West Pakistan, Operation X written by Capt MNR Samant and Sandeep Unnithan is the untold story behind one of the world’s largest covert naval wars. Naval Commando Operations (X) was the Directorate of the Naval Intelligence’s code for a series of complicated guerrilla operations directed against the maritime jugular of the Pakistan Army in erstwhile East Pakistan. These innovative sabotage missions, executed with specially-trained East Bengali college students, were part of India’s assistance to the Mukti Bahini guerillas in the months preceding the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war , NCO(X) used the largest number of maritime saboteurs in the history of modern naval warfare to achieve its objectives. Author Sandeep Unnithan, Executive Editor of India Today, has also written the book Black Tornado: The Three Sieges of Mumbai 26/11. Commodore Abdul Wahed Chowdhury of the Bangladeshi Navy was the Chief of Operation Jackpot, one of the three operations undertaken by the Bengal Mukti Bahini along with the Indian government. In a conversation with naval historian Commodore Srikant Kesnur, they discuss the inner world of this conflict and its many intricacies.