Dacca, June 27. India is holding a number of West Pakistani Regular Army officers taken over the border by retreating Bengali units according to diplomatic and other sources here. Existing tensions between the two countries could easily be exacerbated if the Pakistani Government chooses to protest, since the detention of another country’s military officers amounts almost to an act of war.

As the dust settles here, it has become clear that many of the stories of Bengali units killing their West Pakistani officers and of West Pakistani units killing their Bengali officers have been exaggerated. In the case of the Fourth Battalion of the East Bengal Regiment in the Comilla District, for example, Pakistan Military Intelligence now believes the defecting troops merely detained their colonel and other West Pakistani officers, when they pulled out to India in mid-May. The colonel is now believed to be in Agartala.

Reuters reported that the Pakistan Government had lodged a fresh protest against “continued incidents of unprovoked attacks” on Pakistan territory by the Indian Army. In a note to the Indian High Commission yesterday, Pakistan listed a series of incidents between June 19 and June 21 in which it said Indian armed personnel fired into East Pakistan with light and heavy machine guns and mortars, causing some civilian damage and casualties. The note said the Pakistan Government reserves the right to claim compensation for loss of lives and property in Pakistan during Indian attacks.

The Pakistan Army had been “exercising the utmost restraint and caution” and has not resorted to retaliatory action “despite a repeated breach of ground rules and aggressive action by Indian armed personnel in the border areas of East Pakistan,” the note claimed.