378 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড "Normally we would have killed him as he ran," I was informed chattily by Major Rathore, the G-2 Ops, of the 9th Division, as we stood on the outskirts of a tiny village near Mudafarganj, about 20 miles south of Comilla. "But we are checking him out for your sake. You are new here and I see you have a squeamish stomach." "Why kill him?" I asked with mounting concern. "Because he might be a Hindu or he might be a rebel, perhaps a student or an Awami Leaguer. They know we are sorting them out and they betray themselves by running." "But why are you killing them? And why pick on the Hindus?" I persisted. "Must I remind you". Rathore said severely, "how they have tried to destroy Pakistan? Now under the cover of the fighting we have an excellent opportunity of finishing them off." "Of course," he added hastily, "We are only killing the Hindu men. We are soldiers, not cowards like the rebels. They kill our women and children." I was getting my first glimpse of the stain of blood which has spread over the otherwise verdant land of East Bengal. First it was the massacre of the non-Bengalis in a savage outburst of Bengali hatred. Now it was massacre, deliberately carried out by the West Pakistan army. The pogrom's victims are not only the Hindus of East Bengal-who constitute about 10 per cent of the 75 million populations—but also many thousands of Bengali Muslims. These include university and college students, teachers, Awami League and Left-Wing political cadres and every one the army can catch of the 176,000 Bengali military men and police who mutinied on March 26 in a spectacular, though untimely and ill-started bid to create in an independent Republic of Bangladesh. What I saw and heard with unbelieving eyes and ears during my 10 days in East Bengal in late April made, it terribly clear that the killings are not the isolated acts of military commanders in the field. The West Pakistani soldiers are not the only ones who have been killing in East Bengal, of course. On the night of March 25 and this I was allowed to report by the Pakistani censor-the Bengali troops and paramilitary units stationed in East Pakistan mutinied and attacked non-Bengalis with atrocious savagery. Thousands of families of unfortunate Muslims, many of them refugees from Bihar who chose Pakistan at the time of the partition riots in 1947, were mercilessly wiped out. Women were raped, or had their breasts torn out with specially-fashioned knives. Children did not escape the horror: the lucky ones were killed with their parents; but many thousands of others must go through what life remains for them with eyes gouged out and limbs roughly amputated. More than 20,000 bodies of nonBengalis have been found in the main towns, such as Chittagong, Khulna and Jessore. The real toll, I was told everywhere in East Bengal, may have been as high as 100,000; for thousands of non- Bengalis have vanished without a trace.
