| শিরোনাম | সূত্র | তারিখ |
| ১৪২। পরিকল্পিত হত্যা | সানডে টাইমস | ১১ এপ্রিল, ১৯৭১ |
THE SUN DAY TIMES, APRIL II, 1971
MURDER HAS BEEN ARRANGED
AFTER DACCA, JESSORE, CHITTAGONG...
Nicholas Tomalin reports an East Pakistan Town waiting to die
By the time those words are in print the town of Dinajpur in “Free Bangladesh" will almost certainly by overwhelmed by West Pakistani troops and Sgt-Major Abdur Rab. Its chief defender will probably be dead.
Only 350 lightly-armed soldiers were dug in around the town, the centre of Bangladesh resistance is the remote north-western province of East Pakistan, when I left it on Friday. Most were untried in battle and their supplies of ammunition from the East Pakistan Rifles armoury in Dinajpur were down to half -a-dozen crates of mortar shells, rockets, and machine-gun bullets.
Several hundred troops of the West Pakistan Frontier Force Regiment were at Saidpur nearby and there were hundreds more at the garrison town of Rangpur. They were heavily armed, veterans of the Indo-Pak war, and had Chinese-made light tanks. These tanks were moving forward. One determined break-through and they could be in Dinajpur within an hour.
Sgt-Major Rab and his forces have no illusions about what will happen when the enemy do attack. They have overheard on their captured military radio official orders from President Yahya Khan's high command that opposition be crushed by slaughtering indiscriminately, destroying indiscriminately and above all, by killing all military, civic and intellectual leaders. “It will be a massacre." says the sergeant-major “It is worse than anything Hitler did. It is deliberate genocide."
Genocide is an over-used word. But in the light of these explicit military orders, to West Pakistan troops—which I have independent reasons to think Sgt. Major Rab has accurately reported-it seems justified. In the light, also of my three visits to East Pakistan in the past few days it seems justified. From there it was difficult to see Yahya Khan's policy as anything other than an effort to kill swiftly so many Bangladesh supporters that resistance will vanish for the next 15 years. The killing is taking place. We have seen the massacres with our own eyes and that radio message appears to prove the deliberate intention.
The only mystery is why the West Pakistani troops did not advance during our two-day stay in Dinajpur, Twice they attacked Sgt. Major Rab's forward positions and could have easily mashed through his entire defense. But then they held back.
Perhaps They believed their own propaganda that Indian troops and ammunition were supporting the Bengali defenders of Dinajpur, which is only 10 miles from the Indian border.
