Rawalpindi Conspiracy - Participants

Participants

Eleven military officers and four civilians were involved in the conspiracy. The main person responsible for planning the coup was Maj. Gen. Akbar Khan, the chief of general staff of the Pakistani army. During the 1947 war, Khan had led Pakistani forces under the pseudonym of "General Tariq." He was based in the northern city of Rawalpindi, where the army headquarters were located, while the political capital of the state was in the southern city of Karachi at the time. The civilian conspirators included leading Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, who was notably active in left-wing politics and sympathetic to the Communist Party of Pakistan and Sajjad Zaheer . Akbar Khan's wife, Naseem Shahnawaz Khan, was also believed to have motivated her husband to undertake this plot.