Celebrated chief of India’s army
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Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, 94, India’s most celebrated army chief, died Friday of a progressive lung disease at a military hospital in the southern Indian town of Wellington, the country’s defense ministry said.
Born April 3, 1914, in Amritsar in Punjab state, Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw was commissioned in the Indian army in 1934 when the country was still ruled by Britain. He served in Myanmar, then called Burma, during World War II.
He became chief of the Indian army in 1969 and went on to lead troops to victory in a 1971 war against neighboring Pakistan that led to the creation of an independent Bangladesh.
Manekshaw rose to the rank of field marshal in 1973.
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