Aboobaker Osman Mitha HJ SQA TPk (Urdu: ابو بكر عثمان مِٹها ;–1923–1999), popularized as A.O.

[2][3] Aboobaker Osman Mitha was born on 1 June 1923 at his family residence in the extremely posh Malabar Hill neighbourhood of Bombay, British India.

After finishing high school he joined a pre-cadet academy, and was selected for a commission in the British Indian Army.

[6] After volunteering for the Indian Parachute Regiment, he served in Burma during World War II and was dropped behind Japanese lines for high-risk operations.

[7] Mitha refers to the blatant racism that British officers practised against their Indian colleagues in his posthumously published book, Unlikely Beginnings.

He describes the GHQ in Rawalpindi of the early days of Pakistan in graphic detail, with junior officers using wooden packing cases for desks and chairs and bringing their own pencils to work.

Lt Col (later Maj Gen) Aboobaker Osman Mitha held several important positions as an army officer.

In 1954, Mitha was selected to raise an elite commando unit for Pakistan Army, the Special Service Group (SSG).

Eventually their action bloodied the capital city Dhaka with the blood of thousands of residents including students, military and police personnel, politician and the general mass.

Mitha was Quartermaster General at the GHQ when he was prematurely retired by the civilian Chief Martial Law Administrator, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in December 1971.

Lt General Gul Hasan added Mithas name to a list of officers whose retirements were announced by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in his first speech as president on 20 December 1971, four days after the end of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971.

His sacking came as a surprise to Mitha as he had no hand in the Officer's Revolt at Gujranwala or the hooting down of General Abdul Hamid Khan (Chief of Staff) at a GHQ meeting.

Gen Yahya Khan received a signal from Maj Gen Nawazish, the head of the Pakistan military mission in Amman, asking that Zia be court martialled for disobeying GHQ orders by commanding a Jordanian armoured division against the Palestinians, as part of actions in which thousands were killed.

Her family (as also Mitha's) were strongly opposed to the marriage on grounds of culture: there were differences of religion, language, food habits and even other elements of their basic value systems.