Wings of Duty — Page 25

25 Here, let me recount how this plane came to be purchased by the community. Deputy Muhammad Latif belonged to a respectable Ahmadi family of Lahore. He was the second son of Deputy Muhammad Sharif, who was referred to as Deputy because he was in the civil service. In fact, the title preceded the names of all three of his sons. Latif joined the Royal Indian Air Force at the beginning of the Second World War. In 1943, while commanding a fighter squadron on the Burma front, his plane was shot down by the Japanese. He crash-landed and survived, but was captured and became a prisoner of war. Having endured many tribulations during his time in the camp, he returned home after the war ended only to face another ordeal. Many Indian military personnel captured by the Japanese on the Burma front had joined the Indian National Army which was instituted by the Japanese and led by a former Congress Party president, Subhas Chandra Bose also known as Netaji. Netaji convinced the Indian soldiers that Japan was going to win the war. If the Indians joined the Japanese to fight the Allied forces, he claimed, they would soon overthrow the yoke of British slavery and be heralded as national