বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ পঞ্চদশ খন্ড
farewell there to Rashid and Rahmatullah and asked them to take messages back to our families.
We landed in Brahmanbaria early in the morning of 30 March. One of the first things we noticed patrolling the streets of the town was an army jeep flying the Bangladesh flag. At that time Brahmanbaria was part of liberated Bangladesh. It appeared that the town was control of freedom fighters. We were given the opportunity to meet some of them. That same afternoon we were taken to the rest house of Titas Gas Company in Brahmanbaria. There for the first time I met Major Khaled Mosharaf of the Bengal Regiment. He told us how his, units bad arrested their Pakistani commanding officer and liberated Brahmanbaria which they were now planning to defend against attack by the Pakistani army.
Major Mosharaf took us on an inspection of the defenses of Brahmanbaria and then at night approached, took all three of us to his command post at the nearby Teliapara Tea Estate which he had taken over. The whole area was in darkness as a precaution against air attack by the Pakistan Air force. In the garden managers bunglow all light were blacked out. There Major Mosharaf narrated the odyssey of his battalion and informed us of the massacre of those of his Bengali Colleagues who had been in Comilla Cantonment where had originally been based. He was not in close contact with other areas of the resistance and appeared to have only some knowledge from his signals and the radio of the battle in Chittagong.
That night at the tea estate we heard together over the radio that overseas Bengalis were trying to collect money to buy arms for the Liberation struggle. Mosharaf suggested that we should go across the border and carry their request for the supply of more weaponry to the Indian authorities and should also help in the procurement of arms overseas from funds raised by the Probashi Bengalis. Mosharaf felt that whilst their resistance was strong the freedom fighters would be outgunned by the Pakistani army if they did not very soon get access to more arms and ammunition. He further told me that as of now he and his officers were in a state of insurgeny. They wanted direction from civilion authority. He suggested to me that in the name of sovereign government of Bangladesh all officers and men of the Bengal Regiment should be decommissioned into the army of an independent Bangladesh. Khaled was in as much ignorance as I was over who could constitute such an authority but suggested that if I met with any of the elected political leaders I should communicate his message to them. We were all at that stage deeply impressed by the commitment of these soldiers who had plagued their lives and risked the safety of their families left behind in the cantonments to fight for the Liberation of Bangladesh.
Early next morning, on 31st March, Major Mosharaf provided us with a jeep to take us across the border to Agartala in Tripura State. It seemed that by then the border had become quite pourus and people were moving across it with impunity.
At Agartala we learnt that a large contingent of Bangladeshis were located at the sports stadium. There we met M.R. Siddiqui, Taheruddin Thakur and a number of other
