Md Akmal
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@ Sir, Can you please name that person ? Was it Iskander Mirza ?
Mujib's Search for the Fact about the Killing of Pakistan Army
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@ Sir, Can you please name that person ? Was it Iskander Mirza ?
Sugarcane
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Yes - great son of a traitor & pet of Brits
Md Akmal
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@ Iskander Mirza basically was not a Bengali origin. THey came from Persia. They never talked in Bengali. He joined in British Army before Ayub propably in 1921/22. He was about 6 years in the army then was selected as the British political adviser in all the British Protectorate states in Wasiristan and in other "Gayer elakas". During the time time of partition he was a defence Joint Secetary and then on ----. I was astonised how could being a President of Pakistan at the age of 50 he fell in love with the wife of Iranian Militaruy Attachy ???
@ However, what ever may be be case he was highly intelligent. Had Ayub did not overthrow him then the political scenarion could had been different. He had a great role before, during and creation of Pakistan. He was also the the Governor of East Pakistan.
BanglaBhoot
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Just interested to know about Dr. M. Abdul Mu'min Chowdhury and his role if any in 1971. Does anyone know this guys biography and if he is an alleged war criminal?
Sugarcane
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You are right that he was not ethnic Bengali but he belonged to Bengal and he knew Bengali language as well - In his tenure military was deployed in east Pakistan and killed students. He even arrested ex-MNAs. He kicked out democracy from country and introduced dictatorship, It was because of dictatorship that no one in west knew what's happening in east.
Anubis
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Are you saying that the number of mass graves of biharis were more than that of bengalis??
BanglaBhoot
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Someone must know the answer to this question!
Md Akmal
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@ I don't want to say anything better read yourself. By the way, whatever, he has written it seems to some extend he is correct. You have not seen those events but we have seen some of it. But we could not conclude such a wholesale murder/killing ? Later on once I grew up and served in some of the disputed countries of Europe and Africa what I can say now is a ethnic cleancing. Yes , in 1971 it was a complete ethnic cleancing of Bihares from the soil of Bangladesh. And we are talking of Bengali massacre yes Pakistani Army did it but not at the scale we have done it. How many were killed by the Pakistani army/Biharis ? Well Hamidur Rahman Commission says something like 26,000 ??? Sk Mujib's inquery report says something like 70,000/ and we all say something like 3 million/30 lacs ? Where is the evidence ? Here lies the conspiracy ? It is not only the conspiracy of Awami Leaque but also the great conspiracy of India and USSR. I suggest, you better you yourself dig it out.
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
The Ides of March in Dacca
1. The Awami League held East Pakistan’s capital city of Dacca in its ruthless grip from March 1 to 25, 1971. During this dark period of loot, arson and murder, more than 5,000 non-Bengalis were done to death by the Awami League militants and their supporters. For months, before the Ides of March 1971, the hardcore leadership of the Awami League had primed its terror machine for confrontation with the authority of the federal government. Fire-breathing demagogues of the Awami League had saturated the consciousness of their volatile followers with hatred for the West Pakistanis, the Biharis and other non-Bengalis. They propagated a racist and obscurantist brand of Bengali nationalism. Secession from the Pakistani nationhood was undoubtedly their camouflaged goal, On March 1, 1971, within an hour of General Yahya Khan’s forenoon announcement of the temporary postponement of the March 3 session of the Constitution-framing National Assembly, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman fired the first broadside of revolt against the federal government. At a hurriedly summoned press conference in Dacca, he ordered a general
strike in the provincial capital to paralyse the administration and to usurp the authority of the lawfully-established Government in East Pakistan. As he gave the “Go Ahead” signal to his party’s storm troopers, the Awami League militants went on the rampage all over the city, looting, burning and killing. They looted arms and ammunition from the Rifle Club in the nearby industrial township of Narayanganj. They turned two dormitory blocks of the Dacca University, the Iqbal Hall and the Jagannath Hall, into operational bases for their regime of terror.
2. On March 2, armed Awami League jingoes looted guns and ammunition from arms shops in the New Market and Baitul Mukarram localities of central Dacca. They trucked the looted weapons to the Dacca University Campus where student storm troopers practised shooting on an improvised firing range. Frenzied mobs, armed with guns, knives, iron rods and staves, roamed at will and looted business houses, shops and cinemas owned by non-Bengalis. The lawlessness and terror which the Awami League had unleashed in Dacca compelled the provincial administration to summon the help of the Army units garrisoned in the Dacca cantonment. The Awami League’s militants incited the Bengali populace to defy the dusk-to-dawn curfew. Six persons were killed when a riotous mob attacked an army unit in the Sadarghat locality of Dacca. A posse of troops
saved the Dacca television station from being wrecked by a violent mob. On March 3, the general strike ordered by the Awami League all over the province, paralysed life in Dacca. Rampaging mobs, led by gun brandishing Awami League militants, carried fire, terror and death into the homes of thousands of non-Bengalis in the populous localities of Dacca, such as Nawabpur, Islampur and Patuakhali Bazar. Many shops and stores in the posh Jinnah Avenue shopping centre, owned by non-Bengalis, were looted. Fifty non-Bengali huts in a shanty suburban locality were put to the torch and many of their inmates were roasted alive. Thugs started kidnapping prosperous non-Bengalis and extorted ransom money from their relatives. Under the orders of the Awami League High Command, the Radio and Television stations in Dacca gave up playing Pakistan’s National Anthem and replaced it by the “Bangladesh Anthem”.Sheikh Mujibur Rahman announced in Dacca the launching of a Civil Disobedience Movement, an euphemism for rebellion, throughout East Pakistan, Thus, in three days, the Awami League succeeded in establishing a full-blown terror regime whose principal goal was to liquidate the authority of the federal government and to abridge the population of the non-Bengalis, preparatory to the armed seizure of the entire province. The telecommunications and air links between East Pakistan and West Pakistan were snapped under the orders of the Awami League High Command.
3. From March 4 to 10, violent mobs, led by Awami League jingoes, looted and burnt many non-Bengali houses and shops and kidnapped rich West Pakistani businessmen for ransom. In a jail-break at the Central Prison in Dacca on March 6, some 341 prisoners escaped and joined hands with Awami League militants and student activists in parading the main streets of Dacca. Gun-swinging Awami League cadres and activists of the East Pakistan Students League stole explosive chemicals from Dacca’s Government Science Laboratory and the Polytechnic Institute to make Molotov Cocktails and other incendiary bombs. Defiant students of the Salimullah Muslim Hall of the Dacca University tried to burn the British Council office in Dacca but the troops arrived in time and the jingoes escaped. Awami League militants and student activists took away at gunpoint jeeps, cars and microbuses owned by non-Bengalis. They erected “check posts” at nerve centres in the city and outside the Dacca Airport where they frisked the persons of non-Bengalis fleeing Dacca and seized their cash and jewellery, watches, radio sets and every other article of value. On March 7, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman announced his long-range action programme against the federal government at a mass meeting on the Ramna Race Course ground. Unfurled on the speakers’ platform was the new flag of Bangladesh—a map of the province set in a red circle against a dark green background. The crowd yelled ‘Joi Bangla’ (Long Live Bengal) and ‘Bangladesh Shadheen’ (Independent Bengal). Prompted by Awami League volunteers, the crowd shouted slogans against Pakistan, its President, the new Governor of East Pakistan, General Tikka Khan and the Chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party, Mr. Z. A. Bhutto. The multitude sang Tagore’s old song: “Bengal, my Golden Bengal”. While ordering the continuance of indefinite strikes in Government offices, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman set up a parallel government directed by the Awami League. He instructed the people of East Pakistan not to pay Central Government taxes but to make payments to the provincial coffers. He asked his storm troopers to set up road blocks against military movements and to prevent the military from making use of railways and ports. The Awami League took over the radio and television stations, telecommunications, foreign trade and the banking system, including the control of money transfers from East to West Pakistan. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman called for the organization of Revolutionary Action Groups in labour unions, villages and urban neighbourhoods to buttress the Awami League’s defiance of federal authority. In effect, the Awami League leadership had on that day chosen the path of secession and loosed forces whose goal was an independent, racist Bengali state. In a despatch from its correspondent, Kenneth Clarke, London’s Daily Telegraph reported on March 9, 1971: “Reports said that Dacca collapsed into complete lawlessness on Sunday night (March 7) as Sheikh Mujib took the province to the edge of secession”.
From March 11 to 15, the day on which General Yahya Khan flew into Dacca for constitutional talks with Sheikh Mujihur Rahman, the Awami League consolidated the parallel administration it had set up in Dacca. More non-Bengali businessmen were shanghaied and their houses looted.
Non-Bengali passengers were intimidated and detained for questioning by Awami League militants at the Dacca Railway Station. A Government office near Kakrail in Dacca was set on fire. Non-
Bengalis fleeing Dacca by air were frisked by Awami League cadres at their “Search and Loot” check post close to the entrance to the Dacca airport. Bottles of acid, pilfered from the science laboratories in closed educational institutions in Dacca, were flung into Government offices
where some conscientious employees dared work. Armed thugs, claiming links with the Revolutionary Action Groups set up by the Awami League, extorted money from affluent non-Bengalis. From March 16 to 23, while General Yahya and Sheikh Mujib engaged in ding-dong constitutional negotiations, the Awami League continued to operate its parallel administration and trained its cadres in the use of automatic weapons at a number of training centres in Dacca and its suburbs. The incidence of raids on the homes of non-Bengalis mounted sharply. A riotous mob ambushed an Army jeep in Dacca and hijacked the six soldiers riding in it. Guns were looted from the Police armoury in the town. Awami League gunmen clamped a ban on the supply of food grains to the Pakistani military in the Dacca cantonment.
4. March 23, Pakistan’s national festival day, was designated as “Resistance Day” by the Awami League High Command. Instead of the Pakistan flag, the Awami League militants hoisted the new Bangladesh flag atop all public and private buildings in Dacca. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman took the salute at an armed March Past at his residence on which the Bangladesh flag was ceremoniously unfurled. The Awami League held displays of its strength, and bellicose mobs, shouting ‘Joi Bangla’, went on the rampage in localities where non-Bengalis were concentrated. More West Pakistani businessmen were kidnapped and their Bengali captors demanded huge sums of money from their relatives as ransom. Violent mobs, waving guns and other lethal weapons, brick-batted Karachi-bound passengers near Dacca Airport. Awami League demonstrators marched past the Presidential Mansion in Dacca where General Yahya was staying and shouted obscenities against him and the federal Army. Young thugs, enriched by the ransom money extorted in the Awami League’s name from non-Bengali businessmen and showing off the
cars they had hijacked from their West Pakistani and other non-Bengali owners, milled in the evenings outside the Dhanmandi residence of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and yelled “Shadheen Bangla” (Independent Bengal). Awami League cadres tangled with the staff of the Chinese
Consulate in Dacca on March 23 when they insisted on hoisting the Bangladesh flag atop the Consulate and the Chinese refused to allow them to do so. Awami League demonstrators, at many places, tore up Pakistan’s national flag and trampled under their feet photographs of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. All through this week, the Awami League militants were beefing up their strength with the defectors from the East Pakistan Rifles and the
paramilitary Ansar force. Gunrunning from India proceeded at a frenzied pace and many Indian agents infiltrated into East Pakistan for sabotage. Hutments of non-Bengalis in Dacca’s shanty townships were set ablaze by the hundreds.
5. The Dacca University Campus served as the operational base of the Awami League militants and its laboratories were used for manufacturing different varieties of explosives. A portion of the Jagannath Hall was used for torturing and murdering kidnapped non-Bengalis. Reports of a forestfire of loot, arson and murder in almost every town of East Pakistan worried the federal government and the Army’s Eastern Command in Dacca. Cyclostyled posters, issued by the Awami League student and labour groups in Dacca and other places in the province, seemed like
military orders of the day. These posters incited the people to “resort to a bloody war of resistance” for the “national liberation of East Bengal”. Some 15,000 fully-loaded Rifles at the Dacca Police headquarters were seized by the Awami Leaguers and their supporters. More arms shops in Dacca were looted by the Awami League terrorists. In the morning of March 25, barricades and road blocks appeared all over Dacca city. Petrol bombs and other hand-made bombs, manufactured from chemicals stolen from the Science laboratories of educational institutions in the past few weeks, exploded at some places. The federal Army’s intelligence service had become privy to the Awami League’s plan for an armed uprising all over the province in the early hours of March 26, 1971. Late in the night of March 25, hours before the zero hour set by the Awami League for its armed insurrection, the federal army units fanned out from the Dacca cantonment and conducted, with lightning speed, a series of pre-emptive strikes which squelched the Awami League’s uprising, at least in the provincial capital, in a matter of
hours. The federal Army’s crackdown on the Bengali insurgents in Dacca showed that the Awami Leaguers, while engaged in talks with General Yahya, were collecting guns and ammunition and making explosives for the anticipated showdown with the federal army. In their bargaining with General Yahya Khan, the Awami League leaders wanted him to agree to a constitutional arrangement that would make East and West Pakistan two separate sovereign states with a very
loose, nebulous confederal link — a link so weak that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s virtually independent Bangladesh could have snapped it any time he wished to do so. A posse of federal troops arrested him at his residence in Dhanmandi in Dacca at about 1-30 a.m. on March 26. He was lodged for the night in the Dacca Cantonment under military guard and flown the next day to West Pakistan and interned. The federal Army’s operations against the rebels in Dacca were so swift and effective that by the dawn of March 26 it was in full control of the city. The Army’s strength in Dacca was adequate to enable it to scotch the Awami League’s rebellion but in the rest of the province the federal troops were thinly spread out. It took them from three days to three weeks to rout the more than 176,000 Awami League-led rebels who conducted “Operation Loot, Kill and Burn” with savage ferocity against the non-Bengali element in the population. Even in some suburbs of Dacca, armed hotheads of the Awami League murdered non-Bengalis by the hundreds in the night of March 25/26, 1971. There is evidence to warrant the belief that the Awami League rebels were using a transmitter in the Indian diplomatic Mission in Dacca
for round-the-clock contact with the Indian authorities who were giving support to the rebels, especially in the border belt. The “Free Bengal Radio”, which went on the air on March 26 and which broadcast news of the phantom victories of the rebels, was undoubtedly an Indian innovation, installed on Indian soil. The Niagra of lies, which surged across the columns of India’s Press and the air-waves of All India Radio, (such as the ****-and-bull story of the imaginary slaying of General Tikka Khan by a Bengali rebel), originated from the fertile imagination of a group of Indian propagandists and Bengali rebels who operated a psychological warfare outfit in Calcutta. Many of the rifles which the federal troops captured from the rebels were manufactured at the Rifle Factory in Ishapur in India while the ammunition stocks bore the marking of the ordinance factory at Kirkee in India. India threw some eight battalions of its Border Security Force in aid of the Awami League rebels in the last week of March 1971 in vital border areas. In the Nawabganj area in Dacca, the federal army seized a secret letter from an Awami League leader to an Indian agent, seeking a meeting across the border to discuss the “supply of heavy arms” from India to the Awami League-led rebels.
6. In Dacca, the rebels burnt a predominantly Bihari settlement of shacks in the Old city, but the Awami League informants of foreign newsmen told them in the morning of March 26 that the Army had set the shanty township on fire. In the twin industrial city of Narayanganj, non-Bengalis, who were kidnapped and murdered by the rebels, were thrown into the Buriganga river or incinerated in houses set ablaze. Peggy Durdin, an American journalist, who, with her husband,
also a journalist, had gone to Dacca to cover the National Assembly’s session scheduled for March 3, gave this account of the mass hysteria whipped up by the Awami League leadership in the Bengali populace in the city since the beginning of the month in an article in the New York
Times Magazine of May 2, 1971: “Almost within minutes of the broadcast announcement (General
Yahya’s March 1 postponement of the National Assembly session) and for weeks afterward, the volatile, bitter, angry Bengalis, from every walk of life, and including women, surged in enormous, shouting processions and demonstrations through the streets to show their resentment and assert their claim to selfdetermination....“As Dacca erupted with angry demonstrators shouting slogans against the President and Mr. Bhutto and chanting ‘Joi Bangla’ (Hail Bengal) and ‘Sadhin Bangla’ (Independent Bengal), Mujib, on March 2, proclaimed a five-day province-wide general
strike; it stopped work everywhere, including all Government offices, closed every shop and halted all mechanical transport, including bicycles. Dacca became a city of eerie quiet except for
the mass meetings held day after day in open places and the parades of chanting demonstrators. Since the only way to get around was on foot, my, husband and I daily walked 10 to 20 miles through the wide, trafficless streets, past the shuttered shops and empty
markets........"The high-pitched fervour sometimes turned xenophobic not only against West Pakistanis—who in some cases were killed on the streets and in their homes and often had their shops looted —but against Europeans. At the Intercontinental Hotel, Awami League
gangs tore down all English signs, including the name of the hotel in electric lettering high up on one side of the building. A shot was fired through a lobby window and such hostility was shown for some days towards foreigners that the Swiss Manager of the Hotel closed the swimming pool and asked all guests to stay in their rooms except for meals. These, because the strike and transport difficulties had depleted staff, became self-service repasts consisting chiefly of rice and several kinds of curries...........” The xenophobic aspect of the agitation unleashed by the Awami League on March 1 was writ large in the manhandling of Peggy Durdin and her husband, also a Correspondent of the New York Times, in the heart of Dacca by a group of Bengali demonstrators. She wrote of it in the New York Times of May 2, 1972:
“On the first day of the general strike particularly, emotional groups of demonstrating, shouting teenagers near the great (Baitul) Mokarram Mosque started to attack my husband and me with iron bars and long poles. Miraculously, an Awami Youth patrol spotted us and in the nick of time, pushed in quickly between us and the assailants, beating them off with their own poles and deftly herding us down narrow alley ways to safety in a local Awami League headquarter....”
Malcolm Browne of the New York Times, who visited East Pakistan early in May, wrote in a Dacca despatch in the NYT on May 6, 1971:
“General Tikka Khan, the Military Governor of East Pakistan, said today that his staff estimated that 150 persons were killed in Dacca on the night of March 25 when the Army moved to re-assert control over this province....“The sprawling city of Dacca, situated on a flood plain, crisscrossed by countless streams and rivers making up the Ganges River Delta, appeared peaceful....“We are accused of massacring students", he (General Tikka Khan) said, “but we did not attack students or any other single group.
7. When we were fired on we fired back.”
“The University was closed and any one in there had no business
being there", the General continued. “We ordered those inside to
come out and were met with fire. Naturally, we fired back........”
Maurice Quaintance of the Reuters News Agency, who also toured East
Pakistan early in May 1971, said in a May 6 despatch from Dacca:
“Lt. General Tikka Khan, the Military Governor, told newsmen at a
reception that the military situation throughout East Pakistan was
completely under control........
“The General said massacres had taken place in East Pakistan but
they were not committed by the Army. After soldiers moved out of
their cantonments on March 25, they discovered the widespread
slaughter of innocent people. He cited one in stance in which he
said 500 people were herded into a building which was then set on
fire. There were no survivors. He said the West Pakistan people had
not been told of such things for fear of reprisals. Tikka Khan said
the Army did not attack anyone unless first fired on and even
dissidents in two Dacca University strongpoints, who were armed
with automatic weapons and crude bombs, were given the chance to
leave the building. The General said that the entire Dacca action
was over by the first light of day on March 26...........
“Close to Dacca airport is a group of shattered homes, uninhabited
and in some cases roofless. Official Pakistan sources say that the
people who lived there were struck by the communal violence in
the period before the Army restored law and order in the country’s
eastern wing.”
About the Dacca University and its affiliated Colleges, whose total
destruction by the Army was alleged by foreign information media hostile
to Pakistan late in March 1971, Maurice Quaintance of the Reuters News
Agency had this to say after visiting the University Campus on May 7,
1971:
“Journalists, Friday, were shown Dacca University where the Army
fought a pitched battle with students and Awami League supporters
on the night of March 25. The fighting centered on the two
University dormitories, Iqbal and Jagannath, where the Army say
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
2 4
crude home-made bombs and an arsenal of weapons boosted the
defenders as the troops moved to take over the strongpoint. A large
hole in the dormitory showed where the Army used rockets to flush
out those they say rejected an offer to give themselves up. On the
front lawn before the dormitories, a senior officer took newsmen
over a training area of barbed wire entanglements and high
stonewalls where he said students had trained for the clash that was
to come............”
About the captured Indian soldiers whom foreign newsmen met in
Dacca and the seized Indian arms and ammunition shown to them on May
7, 1971, Maurice Quaintance of Reuters cabled:
“In Dacca, three Khaki-clad soldiers on Friday confessed they were
captured prisoners sent from India to Pakistan last month to help
the dissident East Pakistan Rifle units supporting the secessionists.
Speaking through an interpreter, one told six foreign
correspondents at Dacca Army headquarters that he came into
Pakistan territory at night after being told with others of his
platoon, that they were moving to the border post.........
“Army Headquarters in Dacca on Friday displayed a selection of
captured weapons and ammunition said to be mainly of Indian
origin. They included rifles, mortar bombs and hand grenades all of
which, the Army said, bore markings proving they were
manufactured in India........”
London’s Daily Telegraph, in its issue of April 7, 1971, carried a
report from its staff correspondent in Dacca, quoting a native of Dundee:
“He describes how after President Yahya’s broadcast on March 26,
a mob came to the factory. The goondas (thugs) went on the
rampage. They looted the factory and offices, killed all the animals
they could find and then started killing people. They went to the
houses of my four directors, all West Pakistanis, set fire to the
houses and burnt them alive, including families totalling 30. They
killed the few who ran out.”
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
2 5
The Sunday Times of London, reported in its issue of May 2, 1971:
“Ten days of piecing together the details in East Pakistan have
revealed a huge and almost successful mutiny in the Pakistan Army
and the brutal massacre of thousands of non-Bengalis— men,
women and children. More than 20,000 bodies have been found so
far in Bengal’s main towns but the final count could top 100,000.
“Eye-witnesses in more than 80 interviews tell horrifying stories of
rape, torture, eye-gouging, public flogging of men and women,
women’s breasts being torn out and amputations before victims
were shot or bayoneted to death. Punjabi Army personnel and civil
servants and their families seem to have been singled out for special
brutality............”
White with fear and with dazed, unbelieving eyes, I saw a Bengali student
jingo behead a non-Bengali captive in a room in the Jagannath Hall of the
Dacca University on March 24, 1971 because his relatives failed to send
the demanded ransom of Rs. 3,000” said Mohammed Hanif, 23, who
lived in Quarter No. 49 of “B” Block in the Lalmatia Colony in Dacca.
Employed in the Tiger Wire Company in Dacca, Hanif said on his
repatriation to Karachi in January 1974:
“In the afternoon of March 24, I engaged a motorised Rickshaw
(three-wheeled taxi) and asked the driver to take me to my home in
Lalmatia Colony. I had spoken to him in broken Bengali and he
knew that I was a non-Bengali. All of a sudden and in spite of my
shouts in anger, he drove the vehicle into the compound of the
Jagannath Hall where six armed students grabbed me. They took
me inside a shuttered room where they frisked me thoroughly and
snatched my watch and Rs. 150 from my pocket. They told me that
I should write a letter to my close relatives, asking them to hand
over to the bearer Rs. 3000 as ransom money to save my life. I
hesitated and asked for some time to make up my mind. They tied
my hands with strong ropes and marched me to a large hall where
many roped non-Bengali captives squatted on the ground............
“The student jingo who had asked me to write the ransom letter
paced towards a hapless victim at the far end of the hall. He told his
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
2 6
prey in Bengali that the ransom money had not materialised and the
deadline given to his relatives had passed, so he must die. The
terrified victim shouted, squirmed and tried to run. But six toughs
grabbed him while the jingo in the lead slit his throat with a
‘Ramdao’ (a kind of dagger) and decapitated him.............
“I was horror-stricken by what I had seen. At midnight, I told my
captors that I would write the ransom letter to my elder brother. I
wrote it in the morning of March 25 and asked my brother to
arrange to give my captors Rs. 3,000 within 24 hours. The deadline
set by the Bengali captors for the receipt of money was the morning
of March 26. But God was merciful and late in the night of March
25, the Army went into action against the rebels in Dacca and they
were routed in the Jagannath Hall encounter. We were rescued by
the federal troops”.
“I am the lone survivor of a group of ten Pathans who were
employed as Security Guards by the Delta Construction Company in the
Mohakhali locality in Dacca; all the others were slaughtered by the Bengali
rebels in the night of March 25, 1971”, said 40-year-old Bacha Khan. He
said he escaped death by climbing a tree in the darkness of the night.
Repatriated to Karachi from Dacca in September 1973, Bacha Khan said:
“I was one of a group of ten Pathans employed by the Delta
Construction Company in Dacca. We lived in the staff quarters in
the Company’s premises. Since the first week of March, the Awami
League militants and young thugs were intimidating non-Bengalis,
particularly the West Pakistanis. So all of us were on the
alert...........
“On March 25, a killer gang of Bengali rebels raided our staff
quarters. As it was a surprise attack, they succeeded in killing three
Pathan guards. I and the other surviving Pathans decided to put up a
fight with the three guns we had. We held the raiders at bay for
some time but they had more ammunition than we had. Taking
advantage of the darkness all around, I slipped away from the scene
and climbed a tree. The next morning I saw the dead bodies of the
six other Pathans whom the rebels had killed at night after their
ammunition was exhausted. The rebels took away our
guns..............”
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
2 7
“The rebels burnt my hut and killed my nine-year-old son on March
17, 1971", said 36-year-old Chand Meah who was employed in the
Bengal Rubber Industries in Dacca. He lived in a hut in the Nakhalpara
locality in the Tejgaon suburb on the way to the Dacca Airport. Chand
Meah was repatriated to Karachi from Dacca in January 1974. He said:
“Nakhalpara was very near the factory where I worked. I had saved
some money and bought a small plot of land in this locality. I had
erected a hut because I could not just then afford to build a pucca
house. My wife, my 9 year-old son and I lived in it Our relations
with our Bengali neighbours were friendly. Since the first week of
March, an element of tension had crept in because of inflammatory
harangues by Awami League demagogues and there were rumours
that there would be a carnage of non-Bengalis.........
“On March 17, when I was away from my hut on duty in the
factory, a large killer gang of Awami League thugs attacked the
non-Bengali huts in Nakhalpara, looted them and put them to the
torch. They also burnt my hut and killed my son, who, in spite of
his young age, tried to resist the attackers. When I returned to what
once was my home I found the rubble still smouldering and my
wife was lamenting over the dead body of our dear son”.
“I estimate that some 1,000 non-Bengalis were killed or wounded
in barely three hours in the Adamjee Nagar New Colony in Dacca on
March 19, 1971”, said Mohammed Farid, 26, who was employed as
Assistant Supervisor in the Spinning section of the Adamjee factory. Farid,
who witnessed the gruesome massacre and escaped it by dint of good luck,
was repatriated to Karachi in January 1974. He said:
“Adamjee Nagar had in the past witnessed tension between the
Bengali and non-Bengali employees and many non-Bengalis had
suffered in clashes. The Awami League had built up a base of
influence amongst the Bengali workers and since the first week of
March 1971, party cadres were inciting the Bengali workers against
the non-Bengalis.........
“On March 19, a killer gang of Awami League militants, armed
with guns, sickles, daggers and staves came into our factory. The
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
2 8
Bengali security guards joined them and they rampaged through the
mill and the houses of the non-Bengali millhands..
“The killer gang attacked the Weaving section and slayed scores of
non-Bengali employees in barely half an hour of Operation Murder.
I saw many dozens of wounded millhands running towards my
Spinning section. I hid myself behind a big machine at the far end
of the Hall. The killers swarmed into my unit and attacked the non-
Bengal employees. Some of the victims ran out and the killers
chased them, shooting with guns. The killing spree of the rebels
continued for nearly three hours. At night, when I emerged from
hiding, hundreds of dead bodies were littered all over the factory
premises. The killer gang looted the houses of non-Bengalis and
burnt many. They slaughtered hundreds of innocent men, women
and children and threw many corpses into flaming houses..............
“Close to the water tank lay the dead bodies of many non-Bengali
girls who, I learnt, were ravished by the killers and then murdered.
It was a terrible scene...........”
“A Bengali neighbour sheltered me and my aged mother from the
terror and fury of the killer gang which had slaughtered my husband, my
father and my two teenage brothers”, said 22-year-old Roshanara Begum
who lived in a house in the Tong: suburb of Dacca. In the March 23 raid on
her house, the killer gang set it on fire and also kidnapped her teenage
sister. Repatriated to Karachi in December 1973, she gave this pathetic
account of her woes:
“My parents hailed from the Indian state of Bihar but my brothers,
my sister and I were born in Dacca. My father was employed in the
Postal Department and he had opted for service in East Pakistan in
the 1947 Partition of the sub-continent. He bought a plot of land in
Tongi in Dacca and built a modest little house on it. We lived in
peace and we had excellent relations with our Bengali
neighbours............
“Since the first week of March, Awami League militants were
spreading hatred for non-Bengalis amongst the Bengali population.
The situation was tense and we had heard of attacks by killer gangs
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
2 9
on non-Bengali homes in many localities of Dacca city. But our
neighbours were decent people and they assured us that we were
safe. All of us spoke excellent Bengali but our mother tongue was
Urdu. So we were known as Biharis. At school, I studied through
the medium of Bengali language.
“In the night of March 23, 1971, an armed gang of Awami League
thugs raided our house. They looted it and set it ablaze. We had no
guns. The raiders overpowered my father, my husband and my two
young brothers and shot them. They kidnapped my teenage sister.
In the encounter between my male relatives and the killers, my
mother and I succeeded in escaping through the backyard into the
house of a God-fearing and gentle Bengali neighbour who
sympathised with us and hid us in his home. Aged 15, my sister
was a student in the 9th class in school. After the federal troops
routed the rebels on March 26, I did my best to trace her but we
could not locate her. The Bengali rebels had kidnapped non-Bengali
girls by the hundreds in Dacca and slaughtered them before the
federal army crushed their rebellion. The souvenir I have of my
loving husband is our two and half year old son who was born to
me a few months after the slaying of Feroz Ahmed, my husband”.
“I heard the screams of an Urdu-speaking girl who was being
ravished by her Bengali captors but I was so scared that I did not have the
courage to emerge from hiding”, said 24 year-old Zahid Abdi, who was
employed in a trading firm in Dacca. He escaped the slaughter of non-
Bengalis in the crowded New Market locality of Dacca on March 23, 1971
and was sheltered by a God-fearing Bengali in his shop. The killers raped
their non-Bengali teenage victim at the back of the shop and later on slayed
her. Repatriated to Karachi in October 1973, Zahid Abdi said:
“On March 23, I took a bus to the New Market shopping locality in
Dacca. As the bus neared my destination, I saw a crowd of Awami
League thugs, armed with guns and daggers, on the rampage. Even
before the bus could come to a halt, I jumped from it and ran
towards a side lane. I had heard that some non-Bengali passengers
had been molested or done to death by the Awami League
hoodlums. On the way towards the side lane, I saw a few wounded
men sprawled on the roadside. A Bengali shopkeeper, whom I had
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
3 0
known in the past, took pity on me and hid me in his shop. When he
saw some thugs coming towards it he locked it up, with me in
hiding, and stood guard. When the killers came, he told them that
he was a Bengali and that he had shut his shop for the day..........
“Acting on his advice, I decided to spend the night in the shop
because the road back home was unsafe. Late at night, I heard the
screams and shouts for help in Urdu of a girl who was being
ravished by her captors in a dark place close to the shop where I
was hiding. Her four captors took turns to rape her. After they had
accomplished their satanic acts, the killer gang shot the girl and
melted away in the void of the night. The shop was locked, and in
the forenoon, when my protector opened it, I told him of the
fiendish happening of the previous night. We looked for the body
of the girl; there was no trace of it but bloodstains and torn pieces
of a woman’s clothing were visible at the spot where I thought that
the girl was raped and murdered. My Bengali saviour, with tears in
his eyes, told me that hundreds of non-Bengali girls had suffered a
similar tragic fate and that the devil’s minions were on the loose all
over the city...........”
Zahid Abdi's estimate is that some 2000 innocent, hapless non-
Bengalis perished in the carnage in the New Market shopping locality and
its neighbourhood.
“The thugs did not spare a single non-Bengali shop or business
premises in the area and looted every article of value”, said Zahid Abdi.
“I wish the federal Army had crushed the Awami League militants
with full force in Dacca in the very first week of March 1971 when they
had defied the Government’s authority”, said Anisur Rahman, 26, who
was employed in a trading firm in Dacca. A graduate of the Dacca
University, he lived in the Nawabpur locality and was repatriated to
Karachi in February 1974. He said:
“On March 23, a huge mob of Awami League militants, many with
blazing guns, went on the rampage in the Nawabpur locality. They
looted the houses of non-Bengalis, machine gunned the inmates and
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
3 1
burnt many houses. They looted every shop owned by a non-
Bengali. Some of my relatives perished in the carnage in our
locality. My escape was nothing short of a miracle...........
“The Awami League militants had guns and plenty of ammunition.
Amongst the killers were many Hindus who appeared to be welltrained
in the use of firearms. On March 9, the Awami Leaguers
had taken away, under the pain of dire punishment, weapons owned
by non-Bengalis. We were rendered defenceless. In the period of
the Awami League’s insurgency in Dacca, kidnapping non-
Bengalis for ransom and then slaying them was the favourite modus
operandi of the Awami League rebels. Hundreds of student bodies
had sprouted all over the city and their hoodlums staged daring
hold-ups on the roads and looted the houses of non-Bengalis. The
Awami League High Command had frozen the bank accounts of
non-Bengalis and restricted their withdrawal right. Awami League
cadres used to reap huge cuts by getting sanctions for larger cash
with drawals by the non-Bengalis. The kidnappers of many affluent
West Pakistanis seized their cars as ransom. From March 1 to 25,
Dacca had no government and no administration worth the name; it
was Thug Rule. Some Bengali civil servants, who were loyal to the
Government, wanted to go to their offices. The Awami League
cadres warned them that they and their dear ones would be turned
into mincemeat if they disobeyed Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s strike
order............”
“Dacca was a city of terror and fire in the third week of March 1971”, said
Mohammad Taha, 55, who lived all through that nightmarish period in
his house on Noor Jahan Road in Dacca. Repatriated to Karachi from
Kathmandu, where he had escaped from the Mukti Bahini in East Pakistan,
Taha said in March 1974:
“The crescendo of the Awami League’s violence rose sharply in the
second week of March 1971 and life became a nightmare for tens of
thousands of innocent non-Bengalis who had never even tinkered
with politics”.
Taha added: "Arson, rape and murder had become the order of the
day. Three of my very close relatives were killed in the carnage.
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
3 2
Killer gangs shanghaied non-Bengalis on the streets and from their
homes and the Bengali police had gone into purdah. The non-
Bengalis thanked God when the federal Army went into action
against the ruthless rebels. But on December 17, 1971, when the
Indian Army and the Mukti Bahini seized Dacca, hell burst upon
the non-Bengalis again and hundreds of thousands of innocent
people were butchered by the Mukti Bahini victors and their
trigger-happy supporters”.
Shah Imam, 30, who was engaged in business in Dacca and who lived in
the Bikrampur locality, testified:
“In the third week of March 1971, a Bengali killer gang murdered
my paternal uncle, my elder brother and his teenage son in a
steamer on way from Barisal to Dacca........
“I learnt from the Bengali bargeman that, in midstream, about 50
armed thugs, shouting ‘Joi Bangla’, attacked the non-Bengali
passengers. They forced the Sareng (captain) to anchor the steamer
on a deserted bank of the river. The killer gang lined up the non-
Bengali passengers on the bank of the river and gunned them to
death. They pilfered every article of value from the bodies of the
slain men, women and children and threw the dead into the river.
After the federal troops routed the rebels, I tried to locate the dead
bodies of my murdered relatives and visited the scene of the
slaughter but there was no trace of them although there were
bloodstains at many places along the bank..............”
Shah Imam was repatriated to Karachi in March 1974.
“My only daughter has been insane since she was forced by her
savage tormentors to watch the brutal murder of her husband”, said
Mukhtar Ahmed Khan, 43, while giving an account of his suffering
during the Ides of March 1971 in Dacca. Repatriated to Karachi in January
1974, he said:
“We lived in a rented house in Abdul Aziz Lane in Dacca. I was in
business and we had prospered. I had married my daughter to a
promising young man..........
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
3 3
“In the third week of March 1971, a gang of armed Bengali rebels
raided the house of my son-in-law and overpowered him. He was a
courageous young man and he resisted the attackers. My daughter
also resisted the attackers but they were far too many and they were
well-armed. They tied up my son-in-law and my daughter with
ropes and they forced her to watch as they slit the throat of her
husband and ripped his stomach open in the style of butchers. She
fainted and lost consciousness. Since that dreadful day, 6she has
been mentally ill. She trembles and she raves many a time as
memory reminds
her of that grisly event in her broken life………..”
“We sought refuge, with our wounded father in the woods near Tongi, a
suburb in Dacca, and lived there on water and wild fruits for three days”,
said Ayesha Khatoon, 22, on her repatriation to Karachi from Dacca in
February 1974. She testified:
“On March 25, 1971, a killer gang broke into our house and looted
all the valuables we had. They trucked away all the loot. My father,
Mr. Nooruddin, a local businessman who owned the house, resisted
the raiders. The Bengali rebels stabbed him in the chest and escaped
with their booty.
“As the killers had said that they would return, my brother and I
helped our father walk some distance to the woods nearby. We
spread a bed sheet and my wounded father lay on it. I bandaged his
wounds but we had no food. My brother brought water from the
pond and some wild fruits. We lived on this repast for three days. In
the afternoon of March 28, we spotted some Pakistani troops and
my brother ran towards them. The soldiers took us back to our
home. I nursed back my father to full recovery.............
“But more travail and misfortune lay in store for us. After less than
9 months, the Mukti Bahini went on the rampage against the non-
Bengalis in Dacca. In the last week of December 1971, a gang of
armed Bengalis came to my house and grabbed my husband, Zafar
Alam. They asked us to give them all the cash and my ornaments. I
had none left. They said that they would set free my husband if my
father signed a bogus document of sale of our house to the leader of
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
3 4
the killer gang. To save the life of my husband, my father readily
agreed to do so. The killer gang promised to bring back my
husband after some questioning. Full two years have passed and I
have no news of him. I presume that the thugs killed him. I
understand that the killer gangs practised this fraud on a lot of
helpless non-Bengalis after the Indians and the Mukti Bahini
occupied East Pakistan in December 1971. The killer gang drove us
from our house and we lived in the Red Cross camp in
Dacca..............”
Aliya Bibi, 40, who lived in a flat with her son in the Mohammedpur
locality in Dacca, reported after her arrival in Karachi in January 1974:
“On March 25, 1971, a gang of Awami League militants and some
thugs raided my house and looted it. They did not spare anything of
value. My 16-year-old son had climbed an umbrageous tree and the
raiders did not detect him..........
“But in the last week of December 1971, he was killed by the
Mukti Bahini. Life has been a torment for me since then.............”
Saira Khatoon, 35, who lived in Mirpur in Dacca, gave this account of the
murder of her husband, Abdul Hamid, in the March 1971 carnage of non-
Bengalis in Dacca:
“My husband left our home in Mirpur on March 25 to go to a
meeting in the city. On the way the Bengali rebels waylaid and
murdered him.
“As I did not see his dead body, I appealed to the federal Army to
help me in locating my husband, dead or alive. The Army tried to
trace him but the presumption was that he was ambushed and killed
as was the fate of my other male relatives in Dacca and other places
in East Pakistan”, said Saira Khatoon.
“I have no choice but to believe that my husband was killed by the
rebels in March 1971”, she added…….. “Hundreds of non-Bengali
teenage girls were kidnapped, raped and murdered”, she further
said.
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
3 5
Zaibunnissa, 33, lived in a flat on Noor Jahan Road in the
Mohammadpur locality of Dacca. Her husband, Abdus Salam, was
employed as a driver in the Dacca office of the Pakistan International
Airlines. She gave this account of the raid on her house by the Bengali
rebels and the death of her husband:
“On March 25, 1971, a gang of Awami League militants raided our
house. My husband resisted the attackers and grappled with them.
The raiders were armed and they overpowered him. They stabbed
him and then looted our house. After the raiders had gone, I felt
some sign of life in my husband. The next morning I took him to a
local hospital. The rebels had been routed but the Bengali hospital
staff was sullen. They did not pay much attention and my husband
died.............
“After December 16, 1971, my 10 year old son and I suffered
again. The Mukti Bahini wanted to kidnap my son and I had to
keep him in hiding for days on end until we were moved to a Red
Cross Camp. Even there, the Mukti Bahini used to kidnap the non-
Bengali men and teenage girls every now and then……….”
Zaibunnissa and her son were repatriated to Pakistan from Dacca in
December 1973.
Shamim Akhtar, 28, whose husband was employed as a clerk in
the Railway office in Dacca, lived in a small house in the Mirpur locality
there. They had escaped the March 1971 massacre because of the strong
resistance put up by the Bihari young men of the locality against the rebels
who attacked them. But after the Indian Army and the Mukti Bahini seized
East Pakistan in the third week of December 1971, life became an ordeal
for Shamim, her husband, Fasihuddin and her three little children. She
described her tragedy in these words:
“On December 17, 1971, the Mukti Bahini cut off the water supply
to our homes. We used to get water from a nearby pond; it was
polluted and had a bad odour. I was nine months pregnant. On
December 23, 1971, I gave birth to a baby girl. No midwife was
available and my husband helped me at child birth. Late at night, a
gang of armed Bengalis raided our house, grabbed my husband and
trucked him away. I begged them in the name of God to spare him
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
3 6
as I could not even walk and my children were too small. The
killers were heartless and I learnt that they murdered my husband.
After five days, they returned and ordered me and my children to
vacate the house as they claimed that it was now their property.
“Biharis”, said the gang leader, “have no right to live in
Bangladesh.” At gunpoint, they drove me with my children to an
open plot of land where we slept on the bare earth in the cold for
three days. My children starved; I was too weak to get them even a
morsel of food. A foreign Red Cross team took pity on us and
moved us to a Relief Camp in Mohammadpur……….”
Shamim and her children were repatriated to Pakistan from Dacca
in January 1974.
Zaibunnissa Haq, 30, whose journalist husband, Izhar-ul Haque,
worked as a columnist in the Daily Watan in Dacca, gave this account of
her travail in 1971:
“We lived in our own house on Razia Sultana Road in
Mohammedpur in Dacca. My husband had, in the past, worked in
the Daily Pasban and was well-known as an Urdu writer and
journalist..........
“On March 25, 1971, a gang of armed Awami League storm
troopers raided our locality and looted my house. My husband was
not at home; otherwise the raiders would have kidnapped him..........
“After the Indian Army and Mukti Bahini occupied Dacca on
December 17, 1971, a reign of terror and death was unleashed on
the non-Bengalis, especially those of us who lived in
Mohammedpur and Mirpur. A dozen Bihari young men of our
locality, including my husband, used to patrol the area at night to
keep marauders at bay. On December 19, late at night, a gang of
armed Bengalis raided the locality and machine-gunned my
husband. My world was shattered when I saw his dead body.
People in the entire neighbourhood cried because he was popular
and had looked after the safety of the neighbours with immense
courage.............
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
3 7
“On December 21, a posse of Mukti Bahini soldiers and some thugs
rode into our locality with blazing guns and ordered us to leave our
house as, according to them, no Bihari could own a house in
Bangladesh. For two days, we lived on bare earth in an open space
and we had nothing to eat. Subsequently, we were taken to a Relief
Camp by the Red Cross.
In January 1974, we were repatriated to Pakistan..........”
Fatima Bibi, 40, whose husband was employed in a trading firm in
Tongi, testified after her repatriation to Karachi from Dacca in February
1974:
“On March 25, 1971, armed Awami Leaguers had looted our house
and beaten up my husband, Abdur Rahman, who had resisted them.
My three young sons were away from the house when the raid took
place. They were brave boys and they took an oath to punish the
thugs. In April 1971, they joined the ******* Force and taught a
lesson to many of the Bengali thugs who had looted the homes of
non-Bengalis in March.
“In the third week of December 1971, when the Indian Army and
the Mukti Bahini captured Dacca, my three sons were killed in
action. On December 17, 1971, an armed gang of 30 Bengalis
raided our home and brutally killed my husband. At gunpoint, they
ordered me to leave the house with my three children. I headed for
the woods nearby. We lived on water and wild fruits and we slept
on leaves. The cries of my starving children caused me pain and
agony. I thought of suicide and headed towards the railway line.
God wanted to save us. A foreign Red Cross team was passing our
way in a jeep and they motioned us to stop. When I told them of
our plight, they took us to the Red Cross Relief Camp in
Mohammedpur where we lived for more than two years”.
Noor Jahan, 33, whose husband, Mukhtar Ahmed, was employed
in the Telegraph and Telephone Department in Dacca and who lived in the
Government staff Quarters in Gulistan colony, said on her repatriation to
Karachi in January 1974:
“We had escaped the March 1971 massacre of non-Bengalis in
Dacca. But in the third week of December 1971, after the Indian
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
3 8
Army and the Mukti Bahini occupied Dacca, my husband was
murdered by a gang of armed Bengalis. Some 20 armed men raided
my house soon after his death, and looted every article of value.
They turned us out of the house at gunpoint and we were on the
streets. Another gang of armed Bengalis drove us to a large
building where some 500 Bihari women and children, whose
husbands had been kidnapped for murder, were lodged. We were
told that any one found escaping would be shot. We prayed to God
for the safety of our children. After five days of hunger and torture,
a Red Cross team took us to a Relief Camp in Mohammedpur in
Dacca. Life in the Relief Camp was an ordeal because the Mukti
Bahini jingoes used to kidnap the Bihari young men and women by
the scores every week. No one was sure that he would be alive the
next morning. Many did not sleep for nights on end. At night,
women whose husbands or sons had been slaughtered before them
would shriek and wail as the memory of their dear ones haunted
them”.
Anwari Begum, 30, whose husband, Syed Mustafa Hussain, was
employed in the Telegraph and Telephone Department in Dacca, lived in
their own house in the Mirpur locality. Repatriated to Karachi from Dacca
with her children, in October 1973, Anwari said:
“In the March 1971 massacre of non-Bengalis in East Pakistan,
every member of my family, including my parents, was slaughtered
in Dinajpur where my father owned a house and some property. In
the third week of March 1971, a gang of armed Bengali thugs
looted my house in Mirpur but my husband escaped the massacre
because he was away on duty in his office.
“In the third week of December 1971, my husband was murdered
by a Mukti Bahini gang and his dead body was delivered at my
house by a posse of Indian troops deployed in our locality. His neck
was severed and some parts of his body were mutilated.
“Shortly afterwards, we were driven out of our house by the Mukti
Bahini and lodged in a Red Cross Camp.............”
Allah Rakhee, 45, whose husband, Mohammed Yusuf, was a
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
3 9
thriving businessman in Dacca and who lived in their own house in Block
D in the Mirpur locality, had this poignant memory of the tragedy in her
life in March and December 1971:
“In the third week of March 1971, a gang of Awami League
volunteers had looted our house when I was all alone in it. They
said that they would kidnap my husband and my two teenage sons
but the federal army routed the rebels and we had peace for nine
months.
“On December 17, after the Indian Army and the Mukti Bahini had
captured Dacca, a score of armed Bengalis raided my house. They
shot my aged husband in the compound of our house. I had hidden
my two sons in the lavatory. Just when the killer gang was about to
leave, one of the raiders stepped into the lavatory and saw my two
sons who cried to escape. He shouted for help and the whole gang
rushed inside and overpowered my sons. They dragged the two
boys to the compound and, before my dazed eyes, shot them dead.
The killers slapped me, and, at the point of a bayonet, they drove
me in their truck to the Red Cross Camp. My eldest son had joined
the Pakistan Army. I have no news of him. I learnt that the Mukti
Bahini threw the dead bodies of my husband and my two sons into
the river.............”
“I had a glimpse of the fiendish slaughter-house set up for
murdering hapless non-Bengalis in Dacca”, said 25-year-old Salma
Khatoon, after her repatriation to Karachi from Dacca in January 1974.
Her slain husband, Nazar Alam Khan, was employed in the State Bank of
Pakistan in Dacca. She testified:
“In the last week of March 1971, the Bengali rebels had murdered
the parents and elder brother of my husband in Rangpur. In the
third week of March, some armed Bengali thugs had looted my
house in the Bashabo locality near Kamlapur station in Dacca. But
my husband had escaped their murderous search.
“In the third week of December 1971, when the Indian Army and
the Mukti Bahini ruled Dacca, he went to his office and did not
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
4 0
return home. In the night of December 18, a posse of Bengali
gunmen looted my house and told me that I should leave it although
we owned it. When my husband did not return even on the third
day, I went to his office. The office was locked from outside.
Through a window I saw a group of tough-looking men burning old
records, bank notes and registers. I also peeped inside a dark store
room which had large blood stains and torn clothes. This, I believe,
was used as a kind of abattoir for killing non-Bengali Bank
employees. I met the wife of a Bengali colleague of my husband in
the adjacent staff quarters for Bank employees. She told me that a
Mukti Bahini gang had raided the Bank on the day my husband
disappeared and it murdered all the non-Bengali employees on
duty. They had dumped the bodies, she said, into a hastily dug pit at
the back of the office building.................
“My orphaned children and I lived for two years in the Red Cross
Camp. The Mukti Bahini seized my house and told me that the
Biharis would not be permitted to own even an inch of land in
Bangladesh............”
“For two hours, my house in Mohammedpur was riddled and
pocked with bullets by a gang of armed Bengali marauders late in March
1971”, said Qaiser Jahan, 22, who escaped to Nepal from East Pakistan in
1972 and was repatriated to Karachi in December 1973.
Qaiser Jahan and her husband, Aziz Hussain, a prosperous
businessman, lived in their own house on Noor Jahan Road in the
Mohammedpur locality in Dacca. They had escaped the March 1971
massacre of non-Bengalis and the gunmen who fired on her house did not
loot it. But in the third week of December 1971, when the Indian Army and
the Mukti Bahini seized East Pakistan, her misfortunes began. Early in
December 1971, her husband had gone on a business visit to Chittagong.
Weeks passed and there was no news of him. Qaiser Jahan heard of the
massacre of non-Bengalis in Chittagong on December 17, 1971. The next
day, at midnight, a gang of armed Mukti Bahini soldiers attacked the
Mohammedpur locality and they continued machine-gunning her house till
the early hours of the morning. Panic-stricken, she decided to leave for
Khulna where some relatives of hers lived. Qaiser Jahan said:
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
4 1
“I sold off my gold earrings and bangles and paid an exorbitant fee
to an agent to take us to Calcutta. Another agent, who smuggled
human beings from India to Nepal, charged me a fat sum of money
to take us to Kathmandu. We lived there in abject poverty for many
months. The United Nations repatriated us to Karachi in December
1973...........”
Kulsoom, 35, whose husband, Abdul Kareem, had his own small
business firm in Dacca, lived in their own house on Jagannath Saha Road.
She was widowed early in 1971. Her 24 year old son was employed in a
trading firm in central Dacca. In the third week of March 1971, a gang of
armed Awami Leaguers raided and looted her house. Her son was not at
home when the raiders came. But in December 1971, Kulsoom’s little
world was shattered:
“It was December 12. My son, Mohammad Yasin, had gone to his
office. My son was a brave young man. He said he was not
frightened by India’s bombing and would go to work. In the
evening, I was stunned when some Civil Defence workers brought
me his battered dead body. He was killed when Indian aircraft
bombed the building where he worked............
“I was benumbed by the loss of my son. In the third week of
December 1971, a Mukti Bahini gang raided and looted my house
and threw me and my three small children on the streets. We lived
for more than two years in a Red Cross Camp in Dacca. In February
1974, we were repatriated to Pakistan”.
Ayesha Begum, 40, who was repatriated to Karachi from Dacca,
with her three orphaned children, in December 1973, testified:
“In the third week of March 1971, a gang of armed Awami
Leaguers had fired on our house in Mirpur in Dacca but the
appearance of an Army patrol made them run away..........
“For nine months, my husband, Abdul Bari, a Bank employee,
lived in peace in our house in Mirpur. But in the third week of
December 1971, a posse of Mukti Bahini soldiers, led by some
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
4 2
gangsters of our locality, came to my house and looted it. They
ordered us to leave the house at once and go to the Red Cross
Camp. Just then my husband returned home from work and in a
matter of minutes the killer gang overpowered him and shot him in
the chest. I was stunned and utterly speechless. One of them
slapped me and threatened that if I did not vacate the house
immediately I would be killed. I begged them to give me some time
to bury my husband but they refused. I appealed to them in the
name of God and two of them agreed to help me in burying my
husband. We dug a grave in an open space nearby and laid him to
eternal rest. My children and I walked to the Red Cross Camp
where we lived for two years............”
Najmunnissa, 30, and her three orphaned children were repatriated from
Dacca to Karachi in January 1974 after they had spent two years in the Red
Cross Camp in Mohammedpur. Her husband was an employee of the East
Pakistan Government and he owned a small house in Mirpur where he and
his family lived. In the third week of March 1971, when he was away on
duty, some armed thugs had looted his house. In the third week of
December 1971, the Mukti Bahini murdered him while he was on his way
to his office. A Mukti Bahini gang raided Najmunnissa’s house in the
evening of December 18th and told her that her husband had been executed.
They gave her no clues to the whereabouts of his dead body. Brandishing
sten guns, the raiders ordered her to leave the house at once as the Bengalis
returning from India had to be accommodated. Najmunnissa said:
“I was a widow; my children were orphans. My tormentors shoved
a gun in my face to force me to quit the house where we had lived
for years. We were on the streets. Subsequently, the thugs changed
their mind and carted us away to a big building where many
hundreds of hapless non-Bengali women and children were herded.
The male members of their families had been liquidated by the
Mukti Bahini in human abattoirs. Life in the captivity of the Mukti
Bahini in this prison was a hell. A Red Cross team located us and
took us to a Camp in Mohammedpur. They said our Bengali captors
were planning our murder in the building and we were saved in the
nick of time.”
Blood and Tears by Qutubuddin Aziz
4 3
Some eye-witnesses from Dacca said that their relatives had been
subjected to violence by the Awami league militants at a number of places
not far from Dacca. Some of the towns named by these witnesses are:
Keraniganj, Joydebpur, Munshiganj, Rupganj, Madaripur, Pubail,
Tangibari, Chandpur, Matlab Bazar, Hajiganj and Baidya Bazar. Many
non-Bengali families fled from these small towns to Dacca after the
Awami League’s terrorisation campaign gained momentum in the third and
fourth weeks of March 1971. Quite a few non-Bengali families, witnesses
said, were killed by the Bengali rebels in the last week of March 1971.
Their houses were looted. Money was extorted by thugs from some wellto-
do non-Bengali businessmen engaged in trade at these places. In
Joydebpur, 22 miles from Dacca, an armed mob, led by Awami League
militants, put up barricades on the rail track and the main highway to block
troop movement on March 19, 1971. A posse of Pakistani troops
exchanged fire with the rebel gunmen in the mob. A rebel was killed and two soldiers were wounded.
In the last week of March 1971, a killer gang looted many non-Bengali houses in Keraniganj and Munshiganj and murdered some non-Bengali men. In Chandpur, violence against the non-Bengalis spiralled in the third and fourth weeks of March 1971 but the death toll was not large. In Baidya Bazar, the rebel gangs wiped out a dozen non-Bengali families and looted their property. Thugs ambushed and held up some non-Bengali businessmen for ransom. In Pubail and Tangi-bari, the Awami League militants and their rebel confederates murdered dozens of affluent Biharis. Shops owned by the Biharis were a favourite target of attack. Kidnapping of teenage girls was also reported from these places. The Awami League militants and the rebels ravished the kidnapped non-Bengali girls and shot them before the federal army controlled the area. This was obviously with the intention of eliminating evidence and witnesses of their crimes. But in areas bordering on India, the retreating Bengali rebels carried away with them the non-Bengali girls whom they had kidnapped and ravished.
kalu_miah
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so finding the truth is becoming a criminal, nice logic bro, how about you exaggerate the BSF killing facts and try to gather UN sympathy, you will be successful
iajdani like many others here are dyed in the wool Awami League supporters. For them finding truth is always 2nd priority.
Zabaniyah
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Never heard of him. Here's something about his profile:
Dr. M. Abdul Mu'min Chowdhury
He wrote this book:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/116101235/Behind-the-Myth-of-3-Million-By-Dr-M-Abdul-Mu%E2%80%99min-Chowdhury
One of his articles from last year:
http://www.globalpolitician.com/default.asp?27363-bangladesh-crisis-existence
kalu_miah
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Great find. I skimmed through the article. It will be useful for my Indian intelligence thread.
BanglaBhoot
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I just needed to check if this guy was credible or not ..... It is a brilliant article he wrote.
Moander
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If what you are posting is true, why Pakistani government haven't try to prove it? You are not only discrediting yourself but you are also pushing the swing voter towards awami league. Independence is a precious thing for Bangladeshi, try to taint it will only force general people to the other side. Keep it up, you are doing a great job for awami league.
animelive
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This is the problem with us. We highlight one event and cover the other. If you are going to post in detail, do the same about Bengali massacre as well. Otherwise the article becomes biased.
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