385 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড Fire and murder their vengeance In one of the most crowded areas of the entire world-Comilla district has a population density of 1,900 to the square mile-only man was nowhere to be seen. "Where are the Bengalis?" I had asked my escorts in the strangely empty streets of Dacca a few days earlier. "They have gone to the villages," was the stock reply. Now, in the countryside, there still no Bengalis. Comilla town, like Dacca, was heavily shuttered. And in ten miles on the road to Laksham, past silent villages, the peasants I saw could have been counted on the fingers of both hands. There were, of course, soldiers-hundreds of unsmiling men in khaki each with an automatic rifle. According to orders, the rifles never left their hands. The roads are constantly patrolled by tough, trigger-happy men. Wherever the army is, you won't find Bengalis. Martial law orders constantly repeated on the radio and in the Press proclaim the death penalty for anyone caught in the act of sabotage. If a road is obstructed or a bridge damaged or destroyed, all houses within 100 yards of the spot are liable to be demolished and their inhabitants rounded up. The practice is even more terrible than anything the words could suggest. "Punitive action" is something that the Bengalis have come to dread. We saw what this meant when we were approaching Hajiganj, which straddles the road to Chandpur, on the morning of April 17. A few miles before Hajiganj, a 15footbridge had been damaged the previous night by rebels who were still active in the area. According to Major Rathore (G-2 Ops.) an army umit had immediately been sent out to take punitive action. Long spirals of smoke could be seen on all sides up to a distance of H quarter of a mile from the damaged bridge. And as we carefully drove over a bed of wooden boards,' with which it had been hastily repaired, we could see house in the village on the right beginning to catch fire. At the back of the village somp jawans were spreading the flames with dried coconut fronds. They make excellent kindling and are normally used for cooking. We could also see a body sprawled between the coconut trees at the entrance to the village. On the other side of the road another village in the rice paddies showed evidence of the fire that had gutted more than a dozen bamboo arid mat huts. Hundreds of villagers had escaped before the army came. Others, like the man among the coconut trees, were slow to get away. As we drove on. Major Rathore said. "They brought it on themselves." I said it was surely too terrible a vengeance on innocent people for the acts of a handful of rebels. He did not answer. A few hours later when we were again passing through Hajiganj on the way back from Chandpur, I had my first exposure to the savagery of a "kill and burn mission." We were still caught up in the aftermath of a tropical storm which had bit the area that afternoon. A heavy overcast made ghostly shadows on the mosque towering above
