পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (অষ্টম খণ্ড).pdf/৫৬৪

এই পাতাটির মুদ্রণ সংশোধন করা প্রয়োজন।

○○° বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র : অষ্টম খন্ড of peasants watched our small dugout during the three-hour trip through the swampland canals, but none of them-not the children tending cattle, nor the fishermen repairing their nets nor the women carrying mounds of mud to repair their flimsy palm leaf houses-returned our waves. “The reason for their seeming sullenness,” Mukti Bahini fighter told me later, “is their sufferings. There is hardly a Bengali family left that has not lost one or several of its relatives”... ...In ramshackle towns and tiny villages, people were quick to tell me of daily executions carried out by the army, of wanton destruction and brutalities. In one small village, everyone seemed to know the story of a 14 year-old girl who was raped by twelve soldiers and then killed-together with her day-old baby. Inhabitants of another village recounted how two soldiers had been captured and taken to the martial-law administrator when they demanded two virgins; the next day the village was burned and 38 people were killed by the army. Several times during my trip into the rebel area, I saw Pakistani soldiers loot stores and help themselves to anything they wanted. To the Bengalis, such barbarism is a stimulant to their hopes of a free state. Everywhere I went, Mukti Bahini rebels and sympathizers were talking about the coming hours of judgment. At one river crossing, I came upon an army sergeant beating a Bengali with a huge stick. He stopped when he saw me, and later the Bengali told me, “it’s like that every day. But the day of revenge is coming and it will be terrible.” THE INDIAN EXPRESS December 20, 1971 BODIES OF DOCTORS, JOURNALISTS, WRITERS AND PROFESSORS DUMPED IN PITS (Despatch from C. S. Pandit, datelined Dacca, December 19, 1971) In the last week before the surrender of the Pakistani occupation army, about 120 intellectuals, including top doctors, professors, journalists, both men and women, were spirited away from their houses during curfew hours under military escort. Nothing was hears of them until about 36 bodies, with hands tied behind, were found dumped in the pits of some brick kilns. The shock of the tragedy spread, like wild fire among the people who started thronging the place. Among the dead were the bodies of Dr. Fazle Rabbi, a top cardiologist of Dacca Medical College: Dr. Alim Choudhury, an eye specialist, Mr. Nizamuddin, a journalist representating the BBC and one of Pakistan’s two news agencies, Pakistan Press International: Mr. Shahidullah Kaiser, a well-known author and joint editor of a magazine: Mrs. Akhtar Imam, provost of women's hostel of Dacca University; Dr. Santosh Bhattacharya, Professor of History: Mr. Sirajuddin Hussain, news editor of Ittefaq and many others.