BAGDA, India, Nov. 23—Large numbers of Indian troops pushed toward the nearby East Pakistani border today and, according to their officers, crossed into East Pakistan.

The troops moved through this town six miles from the frontier along with artillery, amphibious vehicles and full supplies of food and ammunition.

Indian officers asserted that Pakistani troops were not putting up strong resistance in the East Pakistani sector into which they said the Indian troops were moving—a sizable region centering on the city of Jessore, which is only 20 miles from the Boyra border‐crossing point.

This correspondent was barred from proceeding to Boyra, about six miles to the north, and therefore did not actually see the Indian forces cross into Pakistan. But none of the Indian officers here at the staging area in Bagda made any attempt to hide the evidence that their troops were headed into action across the border to support the Bengali insurgents, who had opened an offensive.

‘Their Spirits Are High’

“My men have been waiting to move forward for a month,” one, officer said. “Their spirits are high.”

Other foreign newsmen reported that they observed long convoy of troops and equipment—including amphibious armored personnel carriers —heading to the frontier on road a few miles south of Bangaon.

In New Delhi, meanwhile, defense officials told a cheering Parliament that Indian Gnat jet fighters had shot down three of four Pakistani planes that they said had flown over Indian territory, yesterday afternoon near Boyra.

The officials said that the three Pakistani pilots had bailed out and that two of them had been captured. [In Rawalpindi, however, a Pakistani spokesman said that each side lost two planes in the battle, which he said occurred over the East Pakistani side of the border.]

All the Indian military vehicles moving toward the border at Boyra were covered with camouflage netting, and the soldiers in them, including many turbaned Sikhs, were wearing full ammunition packs and were armed with automatic weapons.

The vehicles, many of which were private trucks commandeered by the army, carried everything from prefabricated bridges to furniture for command posts— all the elements for a major logistical movement. The Indians also moved up amphibious vehicles and, apparently, some tanks as well.

Over a period of less than two hours, this reporter, standing at a newly established Indian brigade headquarters here, watched hundreds of regular Indian troops pass by in truck convoys heading for the border. One tank‐carrier returned from the frontier empty. The thunder of artillery could be heard in the distance.

The convoys were still rolling as this reporter left, so the number of Indian troops pushing into East Pakistan is almost certainly in the thousands.

Late reports reaching Calcutta tonight from usually reliable sources suggested that the Indians have two infantry brigades and an armored regiment inside Jessore district. The Pakistani‐held airport at Jessore was said to be under artillery fire.

According to these reports, the heaviest Indian‐Mukti Bahini attacks are being staged: in the districts of Jessore, Rangpur, Sylhet, Comilla and Chittagong hill tracts.

Indian officers in Bagda said that East Pakistan had been curved up into five sectors for the purposes of the offensive and that they assumed the push was going as well in the other sectors as in Jessore. One officer said he thought that in Jessore the fight would “be over in a week.”

The Indian Government continues to deny not only the Pakistani charge that India has launched a full‐scale invasion of East Pakistan, but even that any Indian troops at all have crossed the border.

The Government is still contending that the heavy fighting now going on inside East Pakistan is entirely between the Pakistani Army and the Mukti Bahini (Liberation Forces), the Bengali insurgents who have been fighting for the independence of East Pakistan since Pakistani troops began their effort last March to crush an autonomy movement.

Reliable reports establish that the Mukti Bahini are heavily involved in the fighting, but the visible evidence indicates that the Indian role is large, if not dominant.

However, most foreign diplomats and other independent observers in India tend to discount as very highly exaggerated the Pakistani charge that the Indians have attacked with nine infantry divisions, four mountain divisions and two tank regiments.

The Indian Government denied in Parliament today Pakistan's charge, made in the United Nations, that India had begun an “undeclared war.”

“To say so,” said V. C. Shukla, Minister of Defense Production, “would be falling prey to Pakistani propaganda and its bid to internationalize its conflict with Bangla Desh [Bengal Nation—the name the insurgents have given to East Pakistan] and get the U.N. to intervene.”

This afternoon at Bagda, which is about 65 miles northeast of Calcutta in West Bengal State, military couriers—apparently from the front pulled in and out of the headquarters compound.

Three jeeps with recoilless guns mounted on them drove out of the compound and headed for the border Piled onto their jeeps were rugged Sikhs, their faces scarved against the swirling red dust thrown up by the convoys.

A single‐engine Indian reconnaissance plane returned from the direction of the border. Medics lounged on the porch of a building that is normally a schoolhouse, waiting for casualties. Indian officers said that their casualties were very light, and at Bagda at least there was no evidence to the contrary.

At no time during today's trip along the border did this correspondent see a member of the Border Security Force —the paramilitary group that normally mans India's borders. All the troops were regular army. No members of the Bengali Liberation Forces were in sight, either.

Most of the Indian troops were reluctant to talk to a foreigner, but they seemed confident—even jaunty—as they rode off toward the border.

India's ban on travel by foreign newsmen to sensitive border areas, imposed several weeks ago, remains in effect. but in the confusion of the troop movements it was possible today to get at least close to some of the activity.

This reporter stopped first today at the Indian border post at Petrapole, about 15 miles south of Bagda. The Indian troops at this post, who are dug into deep bunkers, say that they are facing a force of about 200 Pakistanis, who are positioned in a semicircle around them and who thereby control the first stretch of the road to Jessore. The post was quiet at about 1 P.M., with only an occasional shot by a Pakistani rifleman.

The officers served orange drinks to their visitors and talked about how quiet things were. They said they had heard of an offensive by the Mukti Bahini inside Jessore which adjoins the border post, but that nothing had spilled over into their arca. They said that no Indian troops were involved in the fighting. As they spoke, a few artillery thumps, very distant, could be heard.

After leaving, the visitors drove only a few miles when 12 ‐trucks came down the road from the opposite direction, heading for Petrapole. Each vehicle pulled a 105‐mm artillery piece.

Three hours. later, around 5 P.M., the visitors were passing near Petrapole on their way back to Calcutta when loud and sustained artillery fire opened up from the direction of the border post. Some‐, times four or five reports were heard in quick succession.

Many of the local residents said that they assumed the’ Indian troops were using the artillery fire to dislodge the Pakistani company facing them and to open the Jessore road for trucks and tanks.

This reporter tried to drive once again to the Petrapole post, but this time was barred by local police, who said it was a restricted area.

Despite the heavy military activity and distinctive sounds of war near the border, Indian villagers everywhere seemed unperturbed, Sometimes a villager would stop to stare at a mammoth tank carrier passing by, but this was the exception. Near the roads along which the convoys were rumbling, children swam in canals, women washed. their saris and men laid out silvery jute to dry in the sun.