পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/৪৩৭

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405 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড has been burnt out, and shell holes can be seen in some waterfront buildings of brick and reinforced concrete. The local police chief, Sub-Inspector Hadi Khan, is a non-Bengali promoted in the past month from a job not requiring an examination test of literacy to one that does, although there have been no examinations. He told me that the damage, proportionately the worst I have seen so far, was caused by an accidental fire ignited when a lamp overturned in the market place, "or something like that." But commander Zarin of PNS Titumir said: "We had a sharp engagement with the miscreants of Mangla. The rascals opened upon us with a shore battery-a big home-made gun made out of some sort of iron pipe. But it blew up when they tried to fire it and burnt half the place down." The Commander laughed heartily at this reminiscence, he could offer no explanation for the shell holes in waterside buildings. I could not pursue the matter in Mangla because on this occasion I had to put up with the unasked and unwanted presence of two soldiers wished 011 me for my "security". They clung to my heels like leeches and, in their presence local people shrank away. It would be wearisome to catalogue any more of the weird explanations offered by the Pakistan military authorities of what has evidently gone on and is still going ○鞘。 Welcome Doubtful One the refugees issue, it is clear that only a very brave or very foolish refugee would even try to return as things are, and that his welcome would be very doubtful if he did. Only a peaceful joint operation by India and Pakistan will get any substantial number of refugees home and this seems totally out of the question as thing stand. Even more alarming is the development, with the peace committees and razakars, of two parallel Government in East Pakistan; one the normal civil administration, which is well-intentioned, reasonably efficient, but now speedily approaching complete impotence; the other a regime of paid informers, bigots and thugs answerable to no one and apparently above whatever law is left in East Pakistan. The pacification methods used on the North-West Frontier by the British of long ago, burning villages and gunning down their inhabitants, are bad enough when imported into a heavily populated and peaceful place like East Pakistan. The introduction of the political methods of Hitler and Mussolini even less defensible.