Anthony Mascarenhas, the Pakistani journalist whose horrific account of the slaughter in East Pakistan was carried on three pages of The Sunday Times last week, has been deliberately avoiding publicity since his arrival in Britain a week ago. He made several broadcasts immediately after the article appeared but since then he has been turning down numerous requests for press and television interviews.

“I left Pakistan so as to tell the world what was happening in East Pakistan. But I am not here to canvass a cause or to project myself as a personality. I am just a reporter and I now want to quietly recede into the background.”

His first job is to find a home for his wife and five children whom he secretly sent out of Pakistan ahead of him. and also to arrange for the children's education. “We must put down new roots". he says. The family left everything behind in Pakistan and Mascarenhas brought with him only the proceeds of his pension fund, less than £2,000. " We don’t even have suitable clothing for this sort of weather."

When he has settled his family, Mascarenhas plans to write a book which will place the present crisis in perspective. “It will not be a quickie but a considered study going back to the time of partition.” He is well equipped for such a work; he has been a reporter in India and Pakistan since 1946. first with Reuters and for the past 10 years with the Karachi Morning News, of which he was assistant editor. (He was for a number of years a correspondent for The New York Times and Time magazine. He started working for The Sunday Times only in February this year.) He is also closely acquainted with the two main protagonists in the present conflict, Zulfiqar Bhutto and Shaikh Mujibur Rahman.