Muhammad Akram was born on 4 April 1938 at Dingha,
Gujrat District, into a
Punjabi Awan family of Village Naka Kalan (District Jhelum). He was a
military brat and his father, Malik S. Muhammad, was an enlisted personnel in the
British Indian Army who later retired as a
Havildar, an
army n.c.o., in the
Pakistan Army. In 1953, he dropped out of the
Military College Jhelum due to his father's deployment, and had to take the High School equivalency exam where he took examinations in
geography and
intermediate education. In 1956, he was enlisted in the
Pakistan Army and posted with the
8th Punjab Regiment near
India-Pakistan border. In 1959, Muhammad Akram was selected to attend the
Pakistan Military Academy but only spent a semester after being deployed in
East-Pakistan as a
Naik (equivalent to
Corporal). He received
commission in the Army through his years of attendance at the army's
OCS in
Jhelum in 1961 in the
Frontier Force Regiment, and was attached to the
East Pakistan Rifles from 1963 to 1965. He was commissioned in the
Frontier Force Regiment of
Pakistan Army on 13 October 1963. In 1965, Capt. Akram was stationed in different parts of the
West-Pakistan before being deployed in
East-Pakistan as a
quartermaster with the
Frontier Force Regiment till 1967–68. ==Nishan-e-Haider action==