Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: Pakistan army units are closely patrolling the East Pakistan with India. They claim to be protecting the villages from attacks by Indian soldiers. For the first time, a camera crew has been allowed to accompany one of these patrols. VISNEWS cameraman Bill McConville was taken last Wednesday (30 June) to the village of Muktapur, about a mile inside the Pakistan border and 28 miles north of Syllet. The village was deserted. The pakistani captain in charge of the patrol, Abdul Hamid, said the villagers had fled following shelling from India.

SYNOPSIS: Units of the Pakistan army are closely patrolling the East Pakistan border with India. They claim to be protecting the villager from attacks by Indian soldiers.

For the first time, a camera crew had been allowed to go with one of these patrols. Here, in Muktapur, about a mile inside the Pakistan border and 28 miles north of Syllet, the village is deserted. The Pakistanis say that the villagers fled their homes following shelling from India.

These Bengali villages are being defended by a people strange to the area. They are Punjabis from the western wing of Pakistan and they bring with them their own customs. Chapatis, a kind of thin, round bread, never form part of a Bengali meal.

Carrying weapons and dynamite they claim to have captured from an Indian patrol they put to flight those previous night, the unit moved up towards the border. The captain in charge claimed to be making the border area free to live in.

The patrol ended in an outpost, 500 yards from India, manned by regular soldiers and territorials. Their arms are Chinese. Their aim: to encourage the millions of refugees who crossed into India to return home.