But Sgt.-Major Rab. the senior Bengali in the force, suddenly noticed his Punjabi fellow guests were arriving armed. This was clearly a plot to kill or capture all local Bengali troops. The invitation was thus courteously declined: the Punjabi troops danced without an audience,
That night Punjabi troops drove through the streets of Dinajpur. They carefully destroyed crucial installations at the telephone exchange so the town would be isolated, except for their military communications. They visited various important local Bengali political leaders and was told, shot or imprisoned them.
For two days there was a nervous truce, both sides maneuvering for advantage the Punjabi officers and troops still protesting their friendliness. “If I do not stand up for the East Pakistani Rifles you may kill me" said Lieut. Col. Taraq Rasul Qureshi. The commanding officer. And later they did, indeed, try to kill him.
On Saturday, March 27, things got worse. As rumours of the Dacca massacre filtered through all the Punjabi soldiers nervously left the East Pakistani Rifles barracks and mustered at the Commanding Officers' residence, the Circuit House, where in olden days the Raj judges would lodge. They dug trenches and aligned their guns on the Rifles' barracks. As it happened, the Bengalis fired first and for three days a fierce battle raged, shells from both sides falling in the town and causing many casualties,
Sgt-Major Rab could not command his forces because he was caught in his house, between fires. On Sunday six Riflesmen forayed out from the barracks and, under protective fire, he ran back with them. By great good luck it happened that this Rifles unit, though officially only a police force, contained three old British Indian Army men. Abdur Rab is one of these; the other two are highly skilled with mortars.
For two days their fire was landing solidly on the Circuit House. Finally the Punjabi's nerve broke. They fled first to the neighboring Bengali deputy commissioner's house- “so that your friends, if they fire on us, will also be killing Bengalis."
Then, in their panic, they suddenly decided that such accurate fire could not be coming from mere Bengali policemen, Deputy Commissioner Ahmed says: “They told me they knew they must be surrounded by the Indian Army, which they thought had crossed the border to intervene. They therefore shot their own batmen, who were Bengalis, and retreated from the town to Saidpur."
So a force of 35 Bengali East Pakistani Rifles routed the Punjabis in Dinajpur and the town for the past 10 days has been solidly under Bangladesh control. Acting on information that it was in Bengali hands, we crossed the unguarded border for a visit last Wednesday. Even then it had the mixed atmosphere of a town celebrating freedom, but expecting disaster. Sgt-Major Rab, now officially in command of all defense forces, has thrown out a perimeter guard on classic Sandhurst lines,
The local Punjabi troops may have acted cravenly so far; but last week they were moving their tanks forward, they must be returning to destroy the town.
