445 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড ecstatically chanting the familiar "Joi Bangla" slogan. Now that Bangladesh is victorious, the new fashion is to emphasize the Joi. Driving through the beautifully lush countryside, a chessboard of dark green paddies, brown water and brilliant vegetation, the evidence of the Pakistani Army's precipitate retreat was everywhere, Well concealed, reinforced bunkers has been abandoned without a fight, often with a substantial pile of arms left in them. To the surprise and relief of the Indian engineers, the retreating Pakistanis had not tried to destroy the vital tarmac road or even mine the areas around it. Even where a bridge had been blown, as at Navaran on the Betna River, the Indians were able to cut a dirt road across country and bypass the obstacle: A stream of army lorries and halftracks was churning up swirling clouds of choking brown dust but the traffic kept moving. It was at Jhingcrgacha, too, that we found the first disturbing evidence that a new wave of killing can be expected before the bloodstained nation of Bangladesh settles down to anything like normality. Sprawled by the single track railway were the bodies of three youngish men, clad only in lungis, the flowing skirt-like costume of this region. They were blindfolded, their arms and legs cruelly roped behind their backs. Their throats had been cut and the blood had soaked into the day, brown earth. According to the villagers, the murdered men were collaborators, traitors who had helped the Pakistani troops rape, loot and murder. But nobody would admit that the Mukti Bahini had killed them. In the past few weeks, however, there have been persistent rumors that the Mukti are taking a terrible revenge on those they consider to have betrayed Bangladesh. There are dark rumors of mass "trials” at kangaroo courts which invariably end with summary execution. Yet, like so many other places in Bangladesh, Jhingergacha has every reason to indulge its hatred. When the Pakistanis began pulling out last week, they were alleged to have massacred up to 100 villagers in final spasm of savagery. DAY 7: The headlong fight from Jessore The Indian Troops after taking Jessore town and Jessore cantonment, fought their way on down the road to Khulna, a major river port and one of the biggest cities in East Bengal. Again Philip Jecobsan was with them: The gruesome trail that marked the headlong retreat of the Pakistani Army from its "impregnable" position in Jessore began a few miles outside the town. The tarmac road was scarred and fun-owed by machinegun bullets and rockets. A dozen burnt-out jeeps and lorries lay twisted in the ditches: Pakistani regulars frozen in grotesque poses of agony. Some were charred and blackened; others had terrible, fly-covered wounds. They were the first dead Pakistani soldiers we had seem in this sector since the war began. They had been caught by Indian tanks tearing through Jessore and by jet fighters: they had abandoned their vehicles and ran vainly for the ditches. A large and cheerful crowd of locals posed proudly around the corpses, right arms erect in the "Joy Bangla!" salute.
