As a captain and temporary major he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for conspicuous gallantry and leadership displayed during the Battle of Kwanlan Ywathit.

His original role was in arranging guns and devising strategies for the Poonch rebels organised by Sardar Ibrahim with the assistance of the Pakistan Army.

He makes clear he had no involvement in the Pashtun lashkars organised by Khurshid Anwar, which invaded the state on 22 October 1947.

Less than two months after Independence, fighting started in Kashmir, the Indian Army landed in Srinagar and confronted the Pathan tribesmen who were advancing towards the valley.

Akbar Khan, who was then a brigadier, assumed command of the regulars and irregulars fighting against the Indian forces and was given the code name "General Tariq".

It was during this period that he first became dissatisfied with the moral and material support being given to the Pakistani fighters by Liaquat Ali Khan's government.

Akbar Khan was of the opinion – rightly or wrongly – that acceptance of the ceasefire in Kashmir when he was only four hours away from capturing Srinagar was a mistake, and the armed operation against the Indian Army should have been continued.

All these qualities and tendencies combined to propel him towards conjuring up a plan to remove the Liaquat government by means of a coup d'état.

In sheer frustration, Akbar Khan started discourses with other armed forces officers to form a group to stage a military coup.

Ordinary workers and even sympathizers were often arrested, beaten, sent to the fearful Lahore Fort for interrogation and threatened with dire consequences if they did not break all connections with the CP.

Apparently the general had promised the CP leadership that if he came to power he would stop the continuous governmental assault on the leftists; the CP would be allowed to function as a legitimate political party like any other party and to take part in the elections which General Akbar promised to hold a few months after consolidating his power.

In this meeting were also present Lt-Colonel Siddique Raja MC, and Major Mohammed Yousuf Sethi both of whom later obtained state pardon and became approvers in the case against the others.

Other famous practitioners who appeared for the defence were Malik Faiz Mohammed, Khawaja Abdul Rahim, Sahibzada Nawazish Ali and Qazi Aslam.

The prosecution induced the approvers to state that at the end of the crucial meeting of 23 February 1951 the people present had agreed to overthrow the government.

The Conspirators claimed that after eight long hours of discussion, of arguments and counter-arguments, of high tension and near nervous breakdown, the group of persons assembled in Akbar Khan's house that day had agreed not to take any steps in pursuance of the plan presented by the Chief of General Staff.

In jail the military officers and the intellectual civilians managed to get along together reasonably well, in spite of wide differences in ideology and thinking between some individuals.

There were Major General Nazir Ahmad, who was an Ahmadi; Air Commodore Mohammad Khan Janjua who was Pakistan's first Air Chief; Major Hasan Khan was a Shia; Brigadier Latif was into the Deobandi ideology and read a lot of religious books; Brigadier Sadiq, Lt-Col Ziauddin and Captain Khizar Hayat had faith in pirs and murshids; Lt-Col Niaz Mohammad Arbab was a good-natured person, belonging to an affluent and influential Arbab family of Tekhal Bala, near Peshawar.

After an exchange of hot words, Justice Sir Abdul Rahman thundered: "I will set you right", to which Ishaq boldly replied: "Go ahead, my Lord!"

Of the fifteen, the only woman, Begum Nasim, was acquitted, while Major General Nazir Ahmad was dismissed from service and sentenced till the rising of the court.

In the early hours of the morning on 9 March 1951 I was arrested and carried away the whole of that day, a long distance from Pindi, to jail.

In the deserted suburbs of what looked like a dead town, distant and asleep, that cold night, at 11 p.m. the massive doors of the jail groaned creaked and opened slowly to swallow a motor convoy that was bringing me in seventeen hours had been taken by that convoy speeding across territory that I had not been permitted to see, so that neither the route nor the destination should be known to me or anyone else interested in following us.

That morning while I had been sleeping peacefully, a hundred men had surrounded my house and successfully overpowered my one unarmed watchman.

The UK High Commissioner in his 3rd report to his Government on the Rawalpindi Conspiracy ending 17 March 1951 on the question of evidence against the conspirators, stated that "General Akbar Khan was a dangerous man, under the influence of an ambitious wife, and that he had been regarded as very anti-Commonwealth before he went to the United Kingdom last year to attend the Joint Services Staff College.

General Gracey also told Colonel Franklin that he had informed the Chief of the Imperial Staff of Akbar's tendencies before he had left for the course...

According to an informant... the police have been investigating the activities of Akbar and his wife for the last two years, and General Gracey also maintains that these two, and certain of his friends, had been known as the "Young Turk Party".