CUTIA

CUTIA, the Canine Unit for Tracking and Intelligence Activities, is a covert Pakistani military agency organized around teams of three people and one dog. Its recruits are trained to find and capture people the state has classified as undesirable, with the agency’s methods defined by secrecy, delegated decision-making, and unquestioning obedience. The narrative’s account of CUTIA links this concealed machinery to the military operation in Dacca and to Saleem’s role in locating Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman.

Hidden camp and recruitment

The camp is situated in the Murree Hills, concealed behind a heavily camouflaged perimeter fence and a gate with no name or emblem. It does not appear on maps and is far enough from the Murree road that even passing motorists cannot hear the dogs. The narrator insists the camp exists despite official denial: at the fall of Dacca, Tiger Niazi tells his old friend, the victorious Sam Manekshaw, that he has never heard of CUTIA and dismisses the agency as an absurd idea.

At the camp, Brigadier Iskandar introduces three young recruits, Ayooba Baloch, Farooq Rashid, and Shaheed Dar, as members of a CUTIA unit. The assignment is immediately made concrete by the batman Lala Moin’s description of their work as handling a “man-dog.” The recruits arrive expecting intelligence work and military action against Indians; their talk of an impending war and conquest reflects their assumptions, not a precise understanding of the agency’s actual procedures.

Unit structure and operating doctrine

A briefing led by Sergeant-Major Najmuddin sets out CUTIA’s organization through a rigid question-and-answer exercise. Recruits are told that the teams consist of three people and one dog, operate without an officer accompanying them, and must make their own decisions while maintaining Islamic self-discipline and responsibility. Their stated purpose is to root out people deemed dangerous to the state.

The briefing defines those targets broadly: they are described as concealed and potentially anyone, and associated with threats including the destruction of family life, the rejection of religion, the seizure of landowners’ property, and the abolition of film censorship. The looming elections and prospective return to civilian rule are presented as reasons for concern. The operational commands are to obey without question, search persistently, and arrest without mercy; procedure is covert, efficient, and quick.

The legal authority given for these detentions is the Defense of Pakistan Rules. Under the briefing’s account, a person considered undesirable may be taken into custody and held incommunicado for six months, with the period renewable. The recruits are told that their unit is CUTIA Unit 22 and that badges depicting female dogs will be sewn onto their lapels. The agency’s acronym also carries the blunt insult of the word “bitch,” making its name both an organizational label and a mark imposed on its units.

The tracker and the unit’s formation

The apparent mismatch between a three-person team and the “man-dog” is resolved when the recruits are introduced to their tracker: Saleem, whom the narration at this point calls the buddha. He sits apart beneath a chinar tree, with a nose that stands out as his defining feature, and keeps a silver spittoon close. When Ayooba starts to question the arrangement, Najmuddin stops him and orders obedience. The spittoon is treated as indispensable: Najmuddin warns the recruits not to take it from Saleem because doing so makes him lose control.

The recruits are teenagers, and the narrative emphasizes how readily their limited experience leaves them open to camp gossip. Within a day, other units have turned Saleem into a collection of competing stories: that he comes from an important family, has no memory after a war incident, is related to someone famous, or lives without ordinary human attachments. Some stories claim that his tracking ability can follow trails across water and rocks; others say he is numb and perceives people only by smell. The recruits’ uncertain talk makes it difficult to distinguish fact from legend, while the camp’s treatment of Saleem as a tracker reduces him to a function before they know him as a person.

A later episode changes the dynamic between Saleem and Ayooba. After Ayooba fails in an attempt to shock him with a jump lead, he stops resenting Saleem and begins treating him with respect. The narrator describes the incident as the moment that turns the canine unit into a real team, ready to set out against those it has been taught to regard as enemies. The bond is formed within a system that demands obedience, but it is a change in how the recruits regard their assigned tracker.

Deployment and role in Dacca

On March 15, 1971, twenty CUTIA units assemble in a hut. Sixty-one men and nineteen dogs are ordered to remove their uniforms; the dogs’ identifying collars are taken off as well. Lala Moin issues Army-approved civilian clothing, and the men change into an assortment of ordinary garments. Saleem wears a dhoti and kameez. Although the men are visibly uncomfortable in their unfamiliar clothes, nobody objects: the transformation is carried out as a military order.

The twenty units, including Saleem, Ayooba, Farooq, and Shaheed, are flown to Dacca by way of Ceylon. They travel as civilians, as do the much larger force of sixty thousand West Wing troops sent to the East Wing. The account identifies Tikka Khan as the General Officer Commanding and Tiger Niazi as the officer responsible for Dacca’s subjugation and eventual surrender. CUTIA’s movement is thus part of a larger deployment, with civilian dress concealing the military purpose of the forces being sent east.

On March 25, after talks between Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman, Bhutto, and Yahya have broken down, Mujib proclaims Bangladesh. CUTIA units leave their barracks as patriotic songs performed by Jamila Singer play over the military base loudspeakers. At midnight, the larger force also moves out, and the soldiers who had flown as civilians start the tanks. Brigadier Iskandar selects Saleem, Ayooba, Farooq, and Shaheed to accompany him on the operation. Saleem later tells Padma that he was the one who tracked Mujib down, using one of Mujib’s old shirts to identify his scent. The concealed camp’s training has reached its stated end: pursuit becomes direct participation in the arrest of a political leader.

Secrecy, obedience, and narrative significance

CUTIA’s secrecy operates at several levels. The camp is absent from maps, its existence is denied, and its personnel are trained to carry out covert arrests. In Dacca, the removal of uniforms and collars disguises the identity of both soldiers and dogs, while the route through Ceylon forms part of the concealed transfer. The agency’s institutional language—self-discipline, responsibility, and pursuit—sits beside orders to arrest without mercy and detain people beyond communication with the outside world.

The narrative also makes the gap between CUTIA’s official account and its human reality visible through its treatment of Saleem. To the recruits, he is at once a fellow soldier, a tracker, and the subject of rumor; the unexplained spittoon becomes a boundary they are explicitly ordered not to cross. His eventual report to Padma reveals his personal part in Mujib’s arrest, transforming the agency’s impersonal tracking function into a consequential act carried out by the narrator himself. CUTIA therefore connects military secrecy and the classification of political enemies with Saleem’s changing identity: he is not merely attached to the operation but is the person whose tracking ability brings its target within reach.