পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/৪৩৫

এই পাতাটির মুদ্রণ সংশোধন করা প্রয়োজন।

403 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড The police chief, Superintendent Abdul Rakib Khondaker, has been transferred and the District Commissioner, Nurul Islam Khan, has been informed that he will be transferred. Musical Chairs This is part of the game of administrative musical chairs going on in East Pakistan. Officials of Bengali origin like all the above men are being moved about at dizzying speed. Of the 300 clerical workers employed by the local authority, 66 were Hindus. Only two are now left and the rest, if still alive, have been automatically suspended. I have been repeatedly told that there exists a confidential directive that "members of the minority community"-official jargon for Hindus-are to receive a "stringent security check" before being given a Government job, which would amount to a thinly veiled blacklist. This is officially denied. However, a young Hindu, Arabinda Sen came first among 500 entrants in the competitive examinations for clerical jobs with the Khulna administration last February. He is still unemployed, although the administration is desperately short-handed. The work of the Khulna civic authorities has been severely hampered by army requisitions of their equipment. All the launches of the district administration used for food distribution, flood control work, and similar needs (half the district can only be reached by boat) have been taken, over by the army and navy who have mounted. 50 calibre machine guns on them and are using them on river patrols for "miscreants." The civil authorities arc urgently trying to get them back, or get new boats as there are alarming reports that farmers, down river have not been able to repair many dykes round low-lying Islands. If salt water were to flood this land it would ruin it for many years to come. A tugboat belonging to the Pakistan River Services was sunk by a shell from a Pakistan Navy gunboat in the centre of the town. The local naval chief, Commander AI Haj Gul Zarin, told me that his men had-to sink the tug because miscreants had seized it and were attempting to ram a naval vessel. Local boatman said the normal crew were aboard the tug but failed to answer a challenge, never having heard one before, as they steamed noisily past the naval base. The work of the local peace committee and razakar high command could hardly be said to have achieved "normalcy" either. Two of its members, Ghulam Sirwar Mullah, vice-chairman of the district council, and Abdul Hamid, Vice-chairman of the Khulna municipality, were killed by unknown masked assailants within the past month. And the official records indicate that 21 members of local peace committees throughout the district have been killed in the same period, while 12 are in Khulna hospital at the moment suffering from gunshot wounds and four with wounds caused by knives or daggers.