The Black Night

HOW DACCA PAID FOR A ‘UNITED’ PAKISTAN

MASSACRE

The Black Night of March 25th, 1971

“HOW DACCA PAID FOR A ‘UNITED’ PAKISTAN”

The Dark Night of 25th March - Eyewitness Account

by Simon Dring of Daily Telegraph, London

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, East Pakistan’s popular political leader, was seen being taken away by the army, and nearly all the top members of his Awami League party have also been arrested.

Leading political activities have been arrested, others are dead, and the offices of two papers which supported Mujibur’s movement have been destroyed.

But the first target as the tanks rolled into Dacca on the night of Thursday, March 25, seems to have been the students.

An estimated three battalions of troops were used in the attack on Dacca – one of armoured, one of artillery and one of infantry. They started leaving their barracks shortly before 10 p.m. By 11, firing had broken out and the people who had started to erect makeshift barricades – overturned cars, three stumps, furniture, concrete piping – became early casualties.

Sheikh Mujibur was warned by telephone that something was happening, but he refused to leave his house. “If I go into hiding they will burn the whole of Dacca to find me,” he told an aide who escaped arrest.

The students were also warned, but those who were still around later said that most of them thought they would only be arrested. Led by American—supplied M-24 World War II tanks, one column of troops sped to Dacca University shortly after midnight. Troops took over the British Council Library and used it as a fire base from which to shell nearby dormitory areas.

Caught completely by surprise, some 200 students were killed in Iqbal Hall, headquarters of the militantly anti-government student’s union, I was told. Two days later, bodies were still smoldering in burnt-out rooms, others were scattered outside, more floated in a nearby lake, an art student lay sprawled across his easel.

The military removed many of the bodies, but the 30 bodies still there could never have accounted for all the blood in the corridors of Iqbal Hall.

At another hall, reportedly, soldiers buried the dead in a hastily dug mass grave which was then bull-dozed over by tanks. People living near the university were caught in the fire too, and 200 yards of shanty houses running alongside a railway line were destroyed.

Army patrols also razed nearly market area. Two days later, when it was possible to get out and see all this, some of the market’s stall-owners were still lying as though asleep, their blankets pulled up over their shoulders. In the same district, the Dacca Medical College received direct bazooka fire and a mosque was badly damaged.

As the university came under attack, other columns of troops moved in on the Rajarbag headquarters of the East Pakistan police, on the other side of the city. Tanks opened fire first, witness said; then the troops moved in and leveled the men’s sleeping quarters, firing incendiary rounds into the buildings. People living opposite did not know how many died there, but out of the 1,100 police based there not many are believed to have escaped.

As this was going on, other units had surrounded the Sheikh’s house. When contacted shortly before 1 a.m. he said that he was expected an attack any minute and had sent everyone except his servants and bodyguard away to safety.

A neighbour said that at 1-10 a.m., one tank, an armoured car, and trucks loaded with troops drove down the street firing over the house. “Sheikh you should come down”, an officer called out in English as they stopped outside. Mujibur stepped out onto his balcony and said, “Yes, I am ready, but there is no need to fire. All you need to have done is call me on the telephone and I would have come.”

The officer then walked into the yard and told Mujibur: “You are arrested.”

He was taken away along with three servants, an aide and his bodyguard, who was badly beaten up when he started to insult the officer. One man was killed – a night watchman hiding behind the fence of the house next door.

As the Sheikh was driven off – presumably to army headquarters – the soldiers moved into the house, took away all documents, smashed everything in sight locked the garden gate, shot down the green, red and yellow “Bangla Desh” flag and drove away.

By 2 O'clock Friday

Fires were burning all over the city, and troops had occupied the university and surrounding areas. There was still heavy shelling in some areas, but the fighting was beginning to slacken noticeably. Opposite the Intercontinental Hotel a Platoon of troops stored the empty office of “The People” newspaper, burning it down along with most houses in the area and killing the night watchman.

City lies silent

Shortly before down most firing had stopped, and as the sum came up an eerie silence settled over the city, deserted and completely dead except for noise of the crows and the occasional convoy of troops or two or three tanks rumbling by mopping up.

At noon, again without warning, columns of troops poured into the old section of the city where more than I million people lived in a sprawling maze of narrow, winding streets.

For the next 11 hours, they devastated large areas of the “old town”, as it is called, where Sheikh Mujibur had some of his strongest support in Dacca. English Road, French Road, Niar Bazaar, City Bazaar were burned to the ground.

“They suddenly appeared at the end of the street”, said one old man living in French Niar Bazaar area. “Then they drove down it, firing into all the houses.

The lead unit was followed by soldiers carrying cans of gasoline. Those who tried to escape were shot. Those who stayed were burnt alive. About 700 men, women and children died there that day between noon and 2 p.m. I was told

The pattern was repeated in at least three other areas of up to a half square mile or more. Police stations in the old town were also attacked.

Constables Killed

“I am looking for my constables,” a police inspector said on Saturday morning as he wandered through the ruins of one of the bazaars. “I have 240 in my district, and so for I have only found 30 of them – all dead.”

In the Hindu area of the old town, the soldiers reportedly made the people come out of their houses and shot them in groups. This area, too, was eventually razed.

The troops stayed on in force in the old city until about 11 p.m. on the night of Friday, March 26, driving around with local Bengali informers. The soldiers would fire a flare and the informer would point out the houses of Awami League supporters. The house would then be destroyed – either with direct fire from tanks or recoilless rifles or with a can of gasoline, witness said.

Meanwhile, troops of the East Bengal Regiment in the suburbs started moving out towards the industrial areas about 10 miles from the Sheikh’s centres of support.

Firing continued in these areas until early Sunday morning, but the main part of the operation in the city was completed by Friday night – almost exactly 24 hours after it began.

One of the last targets was the daily Bengali language paper “Ittefaq”. More than 400 people reportedly had taken shelter in its offices when the fighting started. At 4 o’clock Friday afternoon, four tanks appeared in the road outside. By 4-30 the building was an inferno, witnesses said. By Saturday morning only the charred remains of a lot of corpses huddled in back rooms were left.

Curfew lifted

As quickly as they had appeared, the troops disappeared from the streets. On Saturday morning the radio announced that the curfew would be lifted from 7 a.m. until 4 p.m. It then repeated the Martial Law Regulations banning all political activity, announced press censorship and ordering all government employees to report back to work. All privately owned weapons were ordered to be turned in to the authorities.

Magically, the city returned to life, and panic set in. By 10 a.m. with palls of black smoke still hanging over large areas of the old town and out in the distance toward the industrial areas, the streets were packed with people leaving town. By car and in rickshaws, but mostly on foot, carrying their possessions with them, the people of Dacca were fleeing. By noon the refugees numbered in the tens of thousands.

“Please give me lift, I am old man”—“In the name of Allah, help me”—“Take my children with you”.

Silent and unsmiling, they passed and saw what the army had done. They looked the other way and kept on walking. Down near one of the markets a shot was heard. Within seconds, 2,000 people were running; but it had only been someone going to join the lines already forming to turn in weapons.

Government offices remained almost empty. Most employees were leaving for their villages, ignoring the call to go back to work. Those who were not fleeing wandered aimlessly around the smoking debris, lifting blackened and twisted sheets of corrugated iron (used in most shanty areas for roofing) to salvage from the ashes what they could.

Nearly every other car was either taking people out into the countryside or flying a red cross and conveying dead and wounded to the hospitals.

In the middle of it all occasional convoys of troops would appear, the soldiers peering – equally unsmiling – down the muzzles of their guns at the silent crowds. On Friday night as they pulled back to their barracks they shouted “Narai Takpir”, an old Persian war cry meaning “We have won the war”. On Saturday when they spoke it was to shout “Pakistan zindabad – Long live Pakistan”.

Published in Washington Post on March 30, 1971

Massacre

(excerpts from Robert Payne)

The MASSACRE began at exactly eleven twenty-five on the evening of March 25, 1971

Four American built M 24 tanks, followed by a platoon of Punjabi and Baluchi soldiers, rolled up in front of the two student dormitories of the University of Dacca and shelled them at a range of fifty yards. The tanks had not made much noise as they advanced along the metal road from the cantonment, and the soldiers marching behind them were under orders to keep silent. The few passers by were not particularly surprised to see the tanks moving through the center of the city; there had been strange and erratic troop movements throughout the previous week.

The soldiers crouched behind the tanks, as though they feared heavy gunfire from the windows and roofs of the dormitories. Many of the students were already in bed, others were working late, while still others were discussing the political situation which bad been growing increasingly tense during the last few days. They had the feeling that trouble was brewing, but not even the most intellectually adventurous could have guessed that it would take the form of an attack on the dormitories and butchering of students followed by a general massacre in Dacca. On that dark and sultry night the last thing to occur to them was that they were in danger.

The two dormitories were known as 1qbal Hall and Jagannath Hall. lqbal Hall was named after a famous Muslim poet and housed the Muslim students, while Jagannath Hall was named after one of the Hindu gods and housed the Hindu students. The two dormitories lay close together, and it was therefore an easy matter to shell both of them simultaneously.

The shelling, which lasted five minutes, killed about thirty students, including a young artist who was painting -at his easel and whose body was later found sprawled across his blood-soaked canvas. A few students succeeded in reaching the flat roof and were able to fire at the tanks and the advancing Punjabis and Baluchis with old-fashioned, bolt-action rifles before the searchlights sprang up and they were picked off one by one by sharpshooters. Then the soldiers, shouting loudly, broke into the dormitories, shooting at random, and ordering the students to come out with their hands above their heads. Those who did not come out fast enough were shot or bayoneted. Once outside the building, the students were lined up against the walls and mown down with machine guns fired from tanks and armored cars, which had now come up so that the officers could observe the scene. Students who remained alive were then bayoneted to death.

Within a quarter of an hour 109 students were dead. The bodies of the Muslim students were dragged up to the roof of Iqbal Hall, where they were left to the vultures. The bodies of the Hindu students were heaped together like faggots and later in the night, six students, who had been spared, were ordered to dig a grave for them. After they had dug the grave they were shot.

The orders given to the army were to kill everyone in the two dormitories. Thus it happened that janitors, servants, sweepers, mid resident professors were also killed. An old man, known as Madhu, who was in charge of the canteens for the students, was killed, and so were his wife, his son, and his two daughters. A death list of professors living in the neighborhood of the university had also been drawn up, and raiding parties were sent out. Some of these professors lived in an apartment building known as House No. 34. In apartment D lived Professor Maniru Zaman, the head of the department of statistics. The professor, together with his son, his brother, who was an advocate in the East Pakistan High Court, and a nephew who happened to be spending the night in the apartment, were dragged out, lined up against the wall of the first floor foyer, and shot down with machine-gun fire. The professor, however, was still alive when the soldiers left and his wife dragged her wounded husband back into the apartment. Three hours later the soldiers returned under orders to remove the bodies and bury them. They found Professor Zaman in the bedroom, dragged him down the stairs, propped him up against the wall, and shot him through the head. It transpired later that the man on the death list was not the professor but his namesake in the department of Bengali culture.

Professor Govindra Chandra Dev, head of the department of philosophy, was an elderly bachelor who bad never taken a part in politics. He liked to look after poor students, whom he housed and fed, and he delighted in leading them in discussion on religion and philosophy. The soldiers broke into the house, killed the students, and then marched the professor into a nearby field and shot him.

The killing of Professor Dev was inexplicable. He offered no threat to the military regime. His crime was that he was a professor and a Hindu. Most of the professors who were killed that night or during the following days worked in the department of Bengali culture. Altogether eleven professors and lecturers were killed. Dr. Munim, an instructor in the English department, was killed by mistake. The soldiers had been searching for a certain Dr. Munir in the department of Bengali culture. In this casual way the soldiers went about the work of killing professors.

There was method in their violence. Very soon it became clear that there were about a dozen men on the university staff working with the military officials. The death lists written In English in a curiously unformed hand have survived.

By coincidence, a professor of engineering, Dr. Mohammed Naser, living close to the dormitories had acquired a new videotape camera only a few days before. From a window overlooking Jagannath Hall he was able to make a film of the attack on the dormitory and the murder of the students, helped by the blinding searchlights playing on the walls. In the film the students can be seen pouring out of the shattered dormitory with their hands above their heads, and being lined up against the walls. An officer is seen jumping down from a tank turret to examine them, and as he marches up and down the line of students he appears to be holding a review. Then he steps aside, gives an order, and the long line of students falls to the ground. Then, mysteriously, as though coming from nowhere, another line of students appears, and they too are mown down. The film moves jerkily, with something of the effect of an old silent movie, and strange shapes are seen moving in the shadows. Nevertheless, the film records for posterity the first of the many massacres that took in East Pakistan.

Two days later Michel Laurent, a foreign correspondent, slipped into the dormitory. About twenty bodies were still lying outside and there were still some students lying in their beds. They were dead, and their bodies were burned by shellfire. There was blood everywhere, and the tank treads could still be seen.

The attack on the student dormitories was part of a concerted plan to wipe out the intellectual life of the country. But the military were not concerned with destroying only the intellectuals. As fanatical Muslims they were determined to destroy the Hindu minority and all the other elements that might dispute their authority. As the night wore on, their intentions became clearer. The plan of operations involved indiscriminate killing in order to inspire fear and terror, but it also involved carefully selected targets. The plan had been worked out over many weeks and in its original form offered a list of objectives to be pursued in a period of forty-eight hours. In fact very few of these objectives were achieved, and eight months later the military was still pursuing the same objectives.

While the attack on the dormitories was continuing, tanks, weapons carriers, and soldiers were converging on other areas of the city. For several weeks troops from West Pakistan had been flown to East Pakistan, and at least twenty thousand well-armed soldiers were available for military operations in Dacca. One target was the barracks of the East Pakistan Rifles, a constabulary force recruited from the local Bengali-speaking population and therefore unlikely to join forces with the Urdu-speaking invaders. Just as the military received orders to destroy everyone in the dormitories, so it was ordered to destroy everyone in the barracks situated in the Pilkhana district at some distance from the center of the city in the western suburbs. The commandant of the East Pakistan Rifles had some warning of what was about to happen, and the barracks were placed in a state of defense. The attackers shelled the building, set part of it ablaze, and then sent in the Punjabi and Baluchi soldiers to finish the work. Unlike the students, who were caught off-guard and in any case had only a few bolt-action rifles to defend themselves with, the East Pakistan Rifles were armed with machine guns and recoilless rifles, but the final outcome was the same. About a hundred were killed inside the barracks, and those who surrendered were bayoneted to death. There was another mass grave, and a column of thick black smoke drifted up into the dark sky from the gutted barracks. Another column of black smoke was rising from Jagannath Hall, and there were small fires raging all over the city.

Two police stations went up in flames. One of these police stations in the Rajar Bagh district, was attacked with tanks, bazookas, and automatic rifles, but the policemen were forewarned and defended themselves so well that for days afterward the Punjabi soldiers talked about the attack as the most terrible experience they had endured during that terrible night. They had given no quarter, and the policemen had gone on fighting even when the whole building was an inferno. There were only a few survivors among the police, and they were carried off in a weapon carrier, and nothing more was heard of them.

From the windows of the huge Intercontinental Hotel, reporters saw fires breaking out all over the city. The reporters could only guess what was happening. Someone had scrawled on a blackboard set up in the hotel lobby: "Please do not go outside.” The warning was reinforced by the presence of heavily armed soldiers in battle dress in the lobby. The captain in charge of the soldiers was more explicit and threatened to shoot everyone, especially reporters, who so much as stepped an inch beyond the glass doors. The lobby, all glass and chrome-plated steel, was beginning to look like a staging area in a war.

There were only two good hotels in Dacca, and the Intercontinental was the best, the most expensive, and the most luxurious. Nearly all the foreign correspondents lived there. By midnight all of them realized that they had become war correspondents, but very few of them knew what the war was about. President Yahya Khan had just flown to Karachi, and it was a reasonable assumption that there had been a military coup against him. A few guessed that it was another kind of war. A Bengali student, gazing out of an upstairs window, suddenly cried out: "My God, they are shooting everyone!" That, as it happened, was the kind of war that was being fought.

From time to time the heavy glass doors opened to admit some more soldiers or some luckless visitors ordered off the streets, So it happened that around midnight some British diplomats returning to their embassy from a party found themselves under arrest and commanded to cool their heels in the lobby, which had now become a general prison for all foreigners. The British diplomats reported they had seen military roadblocks all over the city. This surprised no one, but explained nothing. The telephone was working, and the more enterprising reporters were busily attempting to contact sources of information in the city. Surprisingly often the telephone would be lifted at the other but as soon as the reporter announced himself there was silence and the telephone was replaced. Occasionally there would come a scrap of information. A Bengali newspaper man telephoned to say that in the downtown area crowds armed with iron bars and staves were racing through the streets. At 1:15 A.M. the telephone went dead and the beacon light on top of the telephone exchange went out.

The Black Night of March 25th, 1971

Professor Rafiqul Islam, Dhaka University

25th March 1971. Universities were closed because of the non-cooperation movement; neither students nor teachers were attending classes. Even then one has to go back a little bit to speak about the events of 25th March. The elections had established the supremacy of the Bengali majority. Consequently, the power to rule the country should have been vested in the hands of their elected representatives, but the authoritarian ruling clique of the west were in no mood to accept the judgement of the people. That is why they cancelled promised sitting of the parliament on the third of March.

In the face of this insult, Bengalis became defiant. The Bangobondhu's thunderous declaration in a mammoth public meeting on the 7th of March - "ebArer shongrAm shAdhinatAr shongrAm: This struggle is the struggle for independence" - began to echo in the skies of Bangladesh. That struggle began with non-cooperation, court boycotts, tax revolt, meetings, processions and other mass actions. The Pakistani government became totally paralyzed.

The incapacitated totalitarian government was incensed and gave vent to it's fury on the black night of 25th March.

Dhaka citizens were apprehensive that the aggressor army might take recourse to a blood-bath. Innumerable barricades were built across the streets and roads of Dhaka. But, they were futile. Soon after day-break, the barbaric attack commenced. Numerous tanks and armored carriers took to the streets. Doors and windows of houses began to reverberate with the sounds of firing cannons, shells and mortars. The deafening rolls of the weapons of death shattered the silence of dusk. And it appeared as if tongues of flame were dancing the dance of daemons on the stage of a blood red sky. Dhaka has been transformed into a bloody war field.

Just like the previous days, some of us had gathered at the University Teachers Meeting Room. Under the aegis of the teachers association we were busy through out the month of March in ar- ranging protest meetings and processions and putting out joint statements. Everyday work always awaited us, and that day was no different. Doctor Khan Sarwar Murshed had prepared a statement that we were planning to present to the British high Commission. Just a few days ago, a news item was published where we learnt that the British Government had permitted the Pakistani Navy ac- cess to the port facilities of the then British protectorate of Maldives for repairs and refueling. We were apprehensive that if at our hour of need the Indian Navy puts up a naval blockade along Pakistani shores, Pakistani ships might attempt to reach Chittagong by way of the Maldives. that is why we were appealing to the British; our statement professed our great concern at the purported action. for several days we attempted to collect signa- tures form well known citizens. Former Ambassador Kamruddin Ahmed signed, whereas former governor Sultanuddin refused to sign our statement.

On the morning of 25th March Doctor Murshed, Doctor Sirajul Islam Chowdhury, Doctor Belayet, Professor Ahsanul Haque, Professor Giasuddin Ahmed (later murdered by Al-Badr), Professor Joynul Abedeen (deceased) amongst others presented our statement to the first secretary at the British Deputy High Commission. On our return to Campus we came across the leaders of Central Students Action Committee Tofael Ahmed and Sheikh Kamal. Sheikh Kamal had come to campus to pick up Tofael Ahmed. Tofael Ahmed told us that the meeting between Yah Yah and the Sheikh Shaheb had ended without agreement; no one knew what might happen.

In the afternoon I went to the University club. All the teachers there were pretty worked up. Some were berating the Awami League leadership for not having yet declared independence. In the even- ing, the Seven O'clock English news on TV we heard of the Bangobondhu's news conference earlier in the day. There he had said - If the Pakistani Army attacked the innocent and peace lov- ing Bengalis then the gallant sons of Bengal will not let that pass unchallenged... etc.. On the way home from the club that night I met up with some known students students from Iqbal Halls. Two students Feroze and Moin told me that they were leav- ing Iqbal Hall for safety. They advised me to take my family elsewhere to safety since my house was so near Iqbal Hall. But it was already 10 at night, where could we go? I had no premonitions of what was going to befall us two hours hence.

Behind Iqbal Hall were University quarters 23, 24 and 25. In to- tal 24 teachers stayed in those buildings with their families. I was a resident of the second floor of building 24. Doctor Fazlur Rahman of the Botany Department lived in building 23. In the same building Professors Anwar Pasha and Rashidul Hassan resided with their families in the apartments on the fourth floor. Just across from building 25 was the Nilkhet railroad. On the other side of the rail-line there was a slum where several thousand homeless eked out a leaving. In front of our buildings and parallel to the Nilkhet Road was four residences of University Administrative Officers. From the night of 35th March through the morning of the 27th Iqbal Hall and the adjoining residences were the main target of the Pakistani Army attack.

Just after midnight on the night of 25th March, the Pakistani Army began their attack on the Student Halls and Staff Quarters of the University. Since Iqbal Hall was known as the head- quarters of the Free Bengal Students Action Committee a major portion of the Pakistani Army fury was directed at Iqbal Hall. Just after midnight Iqbal Hall came under a barrage of heavy mortar and machine-gun attack from near the pond in front and the police barracks behind it. Immediately students and bearers from the Hall, and Bengali Policemen from the Nilkhet Barracks tried to escape and seek refuge in the adjoining teacher's and staff quarters. The Bengali soldiers of the EPR who were on duty at the President's House were disarmed and then to Ramna Race-Course where they were gunned down. Several EPR soldiers managed to flee and found refuge amongst our midst's. The Army set on fire the Nilkhet slum and in cold-blood machine gunned fleeing slum- dwellers from the Nilkhet Rail-Gate. Many managed to escape from the slum and also took shelter with us.

I don't have the words to express the bestiality and barbarity that was perpetrated on the Dhaka University area, especially Iqbal Hall, Jagannath Hall, and adjoining residential areas, for a period of 36 hours from the night of the 25th till the 26th night. What transpired around Iqbal Hall, I saw with my own eyes. Raging infernos everywhere; the slum was burning, the cars parked around the residences were burning. The heaped bodies of the dead from the slum were also set on fire near the Nilkhet rail gate petrol pump. The sound of shells bursting and guns firing, the smoke and fire, the smell of gun-powder and the stench of the burning corpses all transformed the area into a fiery hell. Every so often our building was being peppered with bullets. In the midst of this, we, our families, the students and bearers from the Halls, the slum-dwellers, had given up all hope for life, and were waiting for the hour of death. For most of March, student leaders Nur-e-Alam Ziku and Shahjahan Siraj used to spend the night with thus, but on that fateful might they weren't with us. Had they been with us we would have been very apprehensive about their safety.

The incessant firings from cannons, mortars, tanks, machine-guns and automatics continue throughout the night. On the morning of the 26th the Pakistani killers began to go through the hall rooms and residential apartments and began their orgy of murder and looting. Huge gaping holes appeared on Iqbal Hall and the ad- joining residences of the bearers as a result of the shelling. Many bearers died as a result. Those unfortunate students and bearers of Iqbal Hall who had failed to flee were all killed by the Pakistanis. Some surviving students were taken to the Iqbal Hall kitchen where petrol was poured over them and then they were burnt alive. The university correspondent of the Daily Azad was shot near the auditorium. So was bearer Shamshu. The water pump workers of the Hall as well as the bearers were all brutally mur- dered by the Pakistani fiends.

Having finished their slaughter in Iqbal Hall, the Pakistani animals turned their attention to the residential buildings. The first began in flats of building 23. This here that they murdered Professor Fazlur Rahman of the Geology Department and two of his relatives. They also entered the flats of Professors Anwar Pasha and Rashidul Hassan. Everyone in those flats were hidden under the beds. After failing to see anyone in the torch light, the Pakistani soldiers were heard saying: "Bangali Kutta Bhag Gia - The Bengali dogs have flown." Even though Professors Pasha and Hassan miraculously survived from the Pakistani barbarians, death still met them on the 14th of December, on the eve of Victory, when the killers from Jamat-e-Islam, Islami Chhatro Shango, and the Al-Badr Muslim Bangla, murdered many intellectuals near Mir- pur. Another resident of the building, Dhaka University Assistant Librarian Mridha miraculously survived. But about 30 women, men and children from the slum who took refuge on the roof did not live to see another day. Each of them were brutally murdered by the barbaric Pakistanis, and for nigh over a month their corpses fed the vultures and crows. After several months their skeletons were brought down from the roof; the same day the skeletons of 50 Rokeya Hall staff and their families were removed.

The Pakistani hyenas also entered the building we were in, no 24. On the third flight two mothers from the slum had taken shelter. Their babies were with them. Both of them had been shot in the legs. On seeing the blood allover the entering Pakistani soldiers thought that some of their colleagues had already been through our buildings and so did not enter it. That is why we survived. We did our best to help those mothers and the day we left Nilkhet we had them admitted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

On that night the Pakistani beasts had also attacked Madhu's Can- teen and Rokeya Hall. Madhu Da, and his family, bearers and ayahs of Rokeya Hall and their families, were all brutally murdered that night.

Jagannath Hall too faced the fury of the Pakistani Army. Incessant shellings and blood-letting continued their throughout the night of the 25th and the day of the 26th. After the shelling, the soldiers went from room to room and brought out all the stu- dents and bearers to the field in front of the hall. There they were forced to dig their own graves. Subsequently they were all shot and buried in the graves they had dug themselves. Amongst all the residential halls of the University, Jagannath hall paid most dearly in terms of lives lost. In the teacher's corner of Jagannath Hall's Assembly House used to live Applied Physics' professor Anuddoipayon Bhottacharjo. On that night the Pakistani animals entered his room and bayonetted him to death. His body was put out near the big tree close to the Hall auditorium for some time, and was then probably buried in the mass grave in the field. At the end of the night, the Pakistani beasts attacked the residence Dr. Gobindrochondro Deb opposite the hall. They first shot him in the head and then bayonetted him. They dragged his body outside, and in plain view drove a truck over him. His corpse was then taken to the Jagannath Hall field and was prob- ably buried in a mass grave. Close to Dr. Deb's house, near the Shaheed Minar, used to reside Professor Muniruzzaman and Dr. Jyo- tirmoy Guho Thakurta. Around 3 in the morning the Pakistani en- tered their residences and shot Professor Munirazzaman, his son Akram, and Dr. Thakurta. They died instantly. In the same build- ing, professor Abdur Razzak and Dr. Anisur Rahman survived mira- culously. On the same night, the Pakistani soldiers also attacked the Fuller Road faculty residences. Their first target was build- ing 11. There they entered the residence of University Laborato- ry School teacher Mohammed Sadek. The animals first bayonetted him and then shot him in cold-blood. His dead body remained in that building till December 27. On the 27th he was buried behind the flat. They barbarians had also attacked building 12. They had dragged out Professor Syed Ali Naki of the Social Sciences Department, and a gentlemen by the name of Syed Syedul Islam. For some inexplicable reason they were not killed, but Professor Ab- dul Mutkadir of the Geology Department. from the same building, was brutally murdered. They dragged his body somewhere; it was eventually found on the 27th inside Iqbal Hall. The Pakistani an- imals had also attacked Salimullah Hall and Dhaka Hall. They beat up Salimullah Hall house tutor Professor Munim, and murdered Pro- fessor A. R. Khadem at Dhaka Hall.

This is how we spent those 36 hours. When on the morning of the 27th, the so called curfew was lifted, we all left the area for wherever we could. During those 2 days I had thought that every- thing was over, and we were all condemned to perpetual slavery; but, the firm and strong voice from Chittagong's Shadheen Bangla Betar Kendra told us that we had not died yet, and I lived again. That is why I still live today.

Translation by Kazi Zunaid
Courtesy: Virtual Bangladesh