400 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড her children. She did not want to go to the authorities because she was afraid they would find out her husband was "Joy Bangla"-"Victory to Bengal" the slogan of the banned and smashed Awami League. Then more people came up, Muslim farmers from a village a few hundred yards away named Aramghata. The story they told was like many I have heard in the past week. Two local men named Ali Hamed and Shaukat both claimed possession of a corrugated iron shed. Sometime in April Hamed had returned to the village accompanying two truckloads of West Pakistan soldiers. An argument broke out between the soldiers and the villagers, there was shooting by the soldiers, and six villagers were killed. Two of the dead were members of the local council: Indu Babu, a farmer, and relative, Profulla Babu, Headmaster of a local high school. Both are Hindu names. The other 150 Hindus in the village fled with a few belongings as soon as the soldiers Went. I asked them why were telling me about this incident. They said I had not heard the end of the story. Some Muslims from their village had come up to see what was going on. The soldiers grabbed four of them and told them to recite something from the Holy Koran. They said the four Muslims were terrified but managed to begin "Bismillah-irrahman-if-rahim " (the opening words of the Koran). They said the soldiers shouted: "These are not Muslims! They have been taught to say this to trick us!" They then shot all four. The villagers told me they were angry about this, as they had never had any trouble with their Hindu neighbours. Hamed, they said, now had the iron shed. They said he carried a rifle and they thought he was a "razakar" (volunteer), a term we meet again. What had happened to the Hindus' land? The villagers pointed to the surrounding emerald green fields. It was a standing crop of linseed, a valuable cash crop. In June some people from the Martial Law administration had conducted an auction of 2,000 acres in the absence of the owners. It was normally worth Rs. 300 an acre. It had been sold for Rs. 1% an acre. But the buyers had not got much of a bargain. They could not hire people to harvest most of it and the rest was now flooded and worthless. True Position Lotapaharpur summarized for me the true position about the refugees. No one here really expects them to return in any numbers, because there is an atmosphere of terror in East Pakistan, because the material difficulties in the way of their returning are almost insuperable, and their homes, farms, crops, small businesses, and other assets are being transferred under paper-thin legal devices to people who have strong motives to make sure they never come back-in fact to their political and religious enemies. But the military administration has indeed opened "reception centers" and "transit camps." I drove up to Benapole, close to the Indian border, to inspect these preparations. I was received by the officer in charge of the whole khulna district, Lt.-Col. Shams-uz
