I was on duty as an air traffic controller at PAF Base Masroor, Karachi. Late Pilot Officer Rashid Minhas was also my course mate and we had graduated together. One will find it difficult to imagine the incredible feat by which Bir Sreshtha Flt. Lt. Matiur Rahman took over the aircraft from the taxi track. He was never Rashid Minhas' flying instructor. All Bangladeshi pilots in Pakistan Air Force were taken off flying duties as soon as the crackdown started in the then East Pakistan. As a base safety officer, he approached the aircraft on the taxi track. He had kept his personal car perpendicular on the taxi track, so that no one could approach him from behind. He managed to stop the taxing aircraft of Rashid Minhas, and somehow got into the rear seat of the T-33 aircraft. He neither had his parachute, nor the flying helmet. I personally saw the aircraft take off, while the two were fighting for the controls inside. Later, flying at tree top level they vanished into the Karachi sky.

The incident stunned the whole PAF Base in Karachi, which was a major base in Pakistan. Everybody wondered in amazement as to how a person could try to take over an aircraft from a major military base during wartime and succeed in taking off. The fact that he could not complete his mission was tragic indeed. I think that our young generation should be given the right information of his bravery.