they were legally bound. The Indian Army commanders, Lieutenant General Sagat Singh, Lieutenant General J.S. Aurora, and Major-General Rafael Farj Jacob arrived at Dhaka via helicopter with the surrender documents. The surrender took place at Ramna Race Course, in Dhaka at local time 16:31 on 16 December 1971. Niazi signed the Instrument of Surrender and handed over his personal weapon to J. S. Aurora in the presence of Indian and Bangladesh force commanders. With Niazi, nearly 90,000 personnel of the Eastern Command surrendered to the joint Indian and Bangladesh Army. War prisoner, repatriation, and politics Niazi, who was repatriated to Pakistan, was handed over to Lieutenant-General Abdul Hamid, then corps commander of the IV Corps, by Indian Army from the Wagha checkpoint in Lahore District, Punjab, in April 1975, in a symbolic gesture of the last war prisoner held by India. Upon arriving in Lahore, he immediately refrained from speaking to news media correspondents, and was immediately taken under the custody of the Pakistan Army's Military Police (MP) who shifted him via helicopter to Lahore Cantonment where he was detained despite his strong protests. He was immediately dismissed from his military commission and his war honours were withdrawn from him. Subsequently, he was placed in solitary confinement for sometime, though he was later released. Being the last to return supported his reputation as a "soldier's general", but did not shield him from the scorn he faced in Pakistan, where he was blamed for the surrender. Bhutto discharged Niazi after stripping him of his military rank, the pension usually accorded to retired soldiers, and his military decorations. He was dismissed from the service in July 1975. He was also denied his military pension and medical benefits, though he lodged a strong complaint against the revoking of his pension. In the 1980s, the Ministry of Defence quietly changed the status of "dismissal" to "retirement" but did not restore his rank. The change of order allowed Niazi to seek a pension and the medical assistance benefits enjoyed by retired military personnel. Niazi remained active in national politics in 1970s and supported the ultraconservative agenda on a conservative Pakistan National Alliance platform against the Pakistan Peoples Party. In 1977, he was again detained by the police when the Operation Fair Play military coup occurred on 5 July, overthrowing the government of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Martial law was enforced and Niazi sought retirement