Lt Gen KS Thimayya, Chairman of the now dissolved NNRC, arrived in Delhi by air on March 4, from Korea.

At the Palam airport Lt-Gen Thimayya was received by Gen. Rajendrasinhji, C-in-C, Army, Mrs Indira Gandhi, Mr NR Pillai, Secretary-General of the External Affairs Ministry, Mr RK Nehru, Foreign Secretary, Mr MK Vellodi, Defence Secretary, Mr MJ Desai, Commonwealth Relations Secretary, the Swedish and Swiss Ministers, Lt-Gen Kulwant Singh, Maj-Gen JN Chaudhuri, Maj-Gen Mahadeo Singh, Maj-Gen Tara Singh Bal and the Military Attaches to the US and French Embassies.

Speaking to the Press Correspondents at the airport Lt-Gen Thimayya said it was a "great experience" to be in Korea. The behaviour of the men and Officers of the Indian Custodian Force had been "so wonderful that observers from both sides paid them high tributes".

Lt-Gen Thimayya further told newsmen that as a soldier he was definitely against the principle of voluntary repatriation. " Are you going to have an NNRC every time at the end of the war?" he asked and added: "‘You know the difficulties there are in trying to discover what the man really thinks."

The Geneva Convention, he pointed out, provided that at the end of war the prisoners would be repatriated to their homelands. But after World War II, after the prisoners were returned to Russia, some countries felt that perhaps they would have to think of amending the Geneva Convention to deal with the "new type of warfare, that is, converting the mind of the prisoners who are captured".

Earlier at Calcutta, Lt-Gen Thimayya had said: "We did what we could as faithfully and honestly as possible and we do not think that anyone else or any other Custodian Force could have done better ."

He paid a glowing tribute to the Indian troops who, he said, had maintained their high standard of discipline and sense of humour in dealing with turbulent and violent prisoners of war.

A week before the arrival of Lt.-Gen. K.S. Thimayya in Delhi the first contingent of Indian troops from Korea had arrived by a special train at the Delhi Cantonment station. Present at the station to welcome the troops home were: Mrs. Indira Gandhi, Shri Satish Chandra, Deputy Defence Minister, Mr. MK Vellodi, Maj-Gen Mahadeo Singh and other high ranking Army Officers.

As the train steamed in, a .military band started playing. Officers and men were accorded a warm welcome. Brig Gurbuksh Singh, Deputy Commander of the Custodian Force, was profusely garlanded.

Looking back on the work of the Custodian Force in Korea, India could well be proud of her achievements there. The Korean Mission was the first overseas assignment of Indian troops since Independence. It proved to be a remarkably neat administrative operation. It was planned and executed with meticulous efficiency. The movement of our troops to Korea and their departure from there had been conducted with utmost smoothness. The whole process had been very orderly and without hold-ups of any sort.

This experience abroad was in many ways quite novel for our Officers and men sent out to Korea. It was valuable not only for the personnel of the Armed Services but even for the civilians belonging to the Administrative Services. A kind of new comradeship developed between Officers of different services who had to work and live for nearly six months in close contact with one another.

The Custodian Force as a whole lived up to the Prime Minister’s policy of neutrality. Everyone carried himself with amazing zeal and vigour, discharging his obligations in strict accord with the terms of reference of the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission.

In short, the personnel of the Custodian Force literally lived up to the motto of the Custodian Force: "For the Honour of India".